LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

Class

i

THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

THE TEACHERS OF
EMERSON

BY
JOHN S. HARRISON, Ph.D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN KENYON COLLEGE

Hew

STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY

1910

All rights reserved

0EKERAI

Copyright 1910
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1910

WO

In flBemorfam

WILLIAM OGDEN HARRISON
MARCH 12, 1909

208545

PREFACE

The aim of this work is to show the essen
tially Platonic quality of Emerson's thought.
It is often held that his transcendentalism has
its source in the philosophy of Germany, and
that his mysticism is an inheritance from the
sacred books of the East. But a careful study
has convinced the author that Greek thought
has been the most important factor in Emer
son's intellectual development. Beneath the
surface of his days and years there ran a spirit
of philosophic inquiry which was fed by re
peated readings in the old philosophers of
Greece. From these sons of light he drank
in large draughts of intellectual day. The
author has attempted to show this by a com
parative study of Emerson and the Platonists.

In his studies the author has been helped
by the labors of Dr. E. W. Emerson, whose
edition of the Complete Works of Emerson
has afforded many valuable suggestions re
garding Emerson's acquaintance with the old
philosophers. James Elliot Cabot's Memoir

PREFACE

and Charles Eliot Norton's edition of the
Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle have
also been helpful. For the use which the
author has made of these three works, he takes
pleasure in thanking the publishers, Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, who kindly
granted the necessary permission. To the
generosity of Mr. Thomas M. Johnson, of
Osceola, Missouri, the author is greatly in
debted. It was from him that the rare vol
umes of the Platonists were obtained. For
his kindness in lending these absolutely essen
tial books the author expresses warmest thanks.

JOHN S. HARRISON.
GAMBIER, OHIO, March 24, 1910.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
EMERSON'S PLATONISM 3

CHAPTER II
NATURE 32

CHAPTER III

S°UL 77

THE OVER-SOUL 80

II INTELLECT 125

III THE WORLD-SOUL 139

CHAPTER IV
LOVE AND BEAUTY 145

CHAPTER V
ART . . , Y 186

CHAPTER VI
MYTHOLOGY 221

CHAPTER VII
THE ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 263

BIBLIOGRAPHY 3I7

INDEX . ,: . w :.. ,.. w , .321

THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

THE
TEACHERS OF EMERSON

CHAPTER I

EMERSON'S PLATONISM

THE mind of Emerson may best be stud
ied from the standpoint of Platonism.
If one examines the chief centers of his teach
ing to be found in his conception of nature,
soul, love and beauty, art, and mythology, he
will find that Emerson in his most character
istic utterances is indebted to Plato and the
Platonists. In those great intellectual teach
ers Emerson found a body of thought which
he so thoroughly appropriated that to under
stand the character of his mind it is necessary
to watch it consciously forming itself in keep
ing with the main trend of Platonic specula
tion.

The Platonism, however, which is thus as
cendent in Emerson's thought, is not iden
tified with the body of philosophical doctrine

3

4 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

which present-day scholarship assigns to Plato
and which for English readers is presented in
the volumes of Jowett's translation (1871).
Those volumes came to Emerson's shelves, but
so late in life as to find him with his work
already done. It was the fruits of an earlier
era of Platonic scholarship that Emerson en
joyed. In the complete translation of Plato
made by Thomas Taylor (1804) and in his
earlier translation, The Cratylus, Phcedo,
Parmenides, and Tinuzus of Plato (1793)
Emerson found a rendering of Plato and an
interpretation of his doctrine that identified
Platonism with the final stage of Hellenic
speculation now named Neo-Platonism. The
center of that new philosophy was Plotinus
and the great commentator and expounder of
its doctrines was Proclus. Taylor esteemed
the thinking of these men, especially of Proc
lus, all important in the right interpretation
of Plato, and to render Plato in an English
dress "unattended with his Greek interpreters
in the same garb," Taylor assured his readers
in his Dedication, is to act "like one who
gives an invaluable casket, but without the
only key by which it can be unlocked."
Later the Bohn translation of Plato (1848)
came into Emerson's hands, but in spite of

EMERSON'S PLATONISM $

its aim to present Plato without "the absurd
mysticism and fanatical extravagances which
the New Platonists introduced in their inter
pretations," 1 it was not able to counteract the
effects of Emerson's earlier readings in Tay
lor's edition; Emerson still remained at heart
a sympathizer with the manner of the later
school of Platonism.

His readings in other translations of
Thomas Taylor are proof of the attraction
which the writings of the Platonists had for
him. The Select Works of Plotinus, On the
Theology of Plato by Proclus, The Commen
taries on the Timaus of Plato by the same,
The Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans
and Assyrians by lamblichus, The Life of
Pythagoras by the same, to which is added a
Collection of Pythagoric Sentences, the treat
ise On the Nature of the Universe by Ocellus
Lucanus, were all translations by Thomas
Taylor with which Emerson was familiar.
All but the last two he had in his own library
at Concord. In them he found a mass of
comment culled by Taylor from obscure Pla
tonists. To the Select Works of Plotinus
was appended an extract from the treatise of
Synesius On Providence, which Emerson con-

1 II., General Introduction, p. I.

6 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

sidered "one of the majestic remains of lit
erature." * Generally throughout these Taylor
translations and especially in the writings of
Proclus, Emerson found frequent mention of
Chaldean, or Zoroastrian, Oracles. Taylor
published a collection of them in the Classical
Journal for 1817 and 1818. These oracles
were esteemed by Proclus as genuine frag
ments of wisdom. Emerson, however, made
no inquiry into their genuineness; not caring,
he said, "whether they are genuine antiques
or modern counterfeits, as I am only con
cerned with the good sentences, and it is in
different how old a truth is." 2 Emerson read
Porphyry also along with other books, "to
pass away the cold and rainy season" of i84i.3
The work of this author must have been Tay
lor's translation of Porphyry's Select Works.
The substance of Porphyry's life of Plotinus
was available for him in Taylor's introduc
tion to the Select Works of Plotinus. With
The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius
Trismegistus in the translation made of the
work by Dr. Everard in 1650, Emerson also

1 Complete Works, VII., 202.

2 J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I., 290,
291.

., II, 449-

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 7

had an acquaintance. His reading led him
into a translation of the Akhlak-I-Jalaly made
by W. F. Thomson (1839), which was the
medium through which the philosophy of
Plato and Aristotle got into Mahometism.
With Taylor's translation of Sallust On the
Gods and the World Emerson may also have
been familiar, for he quotes from it in Xature.
He had Taylor's translation of The Pyth-
agoric Sentences of Demophilus. He prob
ably availed himself of the other translations
of Plotinus made by Thomas Taylor — Five
Books of Plotinus, On Suicide, and An Essay
on the Beautiful — though no reference by
name to these works appear in Emerson.
Emerson's reading in the Neo-Platonists was
then as vital a thing as his reading in Plato;
and his indebtedness to these writers must
never be forgotten in explaining his concep
tion of Platonism.

For the man whose life labors made possi
ble the enjoyment of these obscure philoso
phers Emerson has the highest praise.
"There are also prose poets," he \vrites.
"Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, for instance,
is really a better man of imagination, a better
poet, or perhaps I should say a better feeder

8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

to a poet, than any man between Milton and
Wordsworth." 1 During his visits to England
Emerson was constantly inquiring of the men
he met whether they had read Taylor. And
it was incredible, so he told Wordsworth,
that no one in all England knew anything of
Thomas Taylor, "whilst in every American
library his translations are found." 2 Such re
marks testify to the importance which Emer
son attached to Taylor's work.

The effect of these readings in the Neo-
Platonists appears in Emerson's adoption of
their manner of interpreting Plato. They
consider the highest idea in Plato's scheme of
metaphysics the idea of the One as it is treated
in the Parmenides. They identify this idea
with that of the Good which in the Republic
Plato explains is the highest reality. Thus
Thomas Taylor, reflecting their method of
criticism, writes : "Of all the dogmas of Plato,
that concerning the first principle of things as
far transcends in sublimity the doctrine of
other philosophers of a different sect, on this
subject, as this supreme cause of all transcends
other causes. For, according to Plato, the
highest God, whom in the Republic he calls

1 Complete Works, VIII., 50.

2 Ibid., V., 295.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 9

the good, and in the Parmenides the one, is
not only above soul and intellect, but is even
superior to being itself. Hence, since every
thing which can in any respect be known, or
of which anything can be asserted, must be
connected with the universality of things, but
the first cause is above all things, it is very
properly said by Plato to be perfectly ineffa
ble. The first hypothesis therefore of his
Parmenides, in which all things are denied of
this immense principle, concludes as follows:
'The one therefore is in no respect. So it
seems. Hence it is not in such a manner as to
be one, for thus it would be being, and partici
pate of essence: but as it appears, the one
neither is one, nor is, if it be proper to believe
in reasoning of this kind. It appears so. But
can anything either belong to, or be affirmed
of that which is not? How can it? Neither
therefore does any name belong to it, nor dis
course, nor any science, nor sense, nor opinion.
It does not appear that there can. Hence it
can neither be named, nor spoken of, nor con
ceived by opinion, nor be known, nor per
ceived by any being. So it seems.' " 1

Emerson follows this manner of reviewing

1 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, I.,
Introduction, p. 5.

io THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Plato's system. In his essay on Plato he thus
sets forth Plato's conception of the highest
postulate of thought: "Plato apprehended
the cardinal facts. He could prostrate him
self on the earth and cover his eyes whilst he
adored that which cannot be numbered, or
gauged, or known, or named; that of which
everything can be affirmed and denied; that
'which is entity and nonentity.' He called it
super-essential. He even stood ready, as in
the Parmenides, to demonstrate that it was so
— that this Being exceeded the limits of intel
lect. No man ever more fully acknowledged
the Ineffable." '

Modern criticism does not accept this view
of the Parmenides. Scholars no longer in
terpret Plato from the standpoint of the Neo-
Platonists. They consider the Parmenides
either as a dialectical exercise or as a subtle
attempt of Plato to criticise the earlier Eleatic
philosophy from the standpoint of Zeno.2
Consequently they do not co-ordinate the con
ception of the One given in the Parmenides
with the idea of the Good as elaborated in the
Republic. Into the soundness or weakness of

1 Complete Works, IV., 61.

2 The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, III.,
225, 227.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 11

such interpretation it is not necessary here to
enter; it is sufficient to appreciate the differ
ence and to point out Emerson's adherence
to the older school of criticism.

In contrast to this idea of an ineffable unity
of things Emerson places the conception of a
dialectic, the aim of which is to give scien
tific knowledge; and this dialectic he main
tains Plato elaborated. Thus his exposition
goes on to say: "Having paid his homage,
as for the human race, to the Illimitable, he
(Plato) then stood erect, and for the human
race affirmed, 'And yet things are knowableP
— that is, the Asia in his mind was first heart
ily honored — the ocean of love and power,
before form, before will, before knowledge,
the Same, the Good, the One; and now, re
freshed and empowered by this worship, the
instinct of Europe, namely, culture, returns;
and he cries, 'Yet things are knowable!'
They are knowable, because being from one,
things correspond. There is a scale; and the
correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter
to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide.
As there is a science of stars, called astron
omy; a science of quantities, called mathe
matics ; a science of qualities, called chemis
try; so there is a science of sciences — I call it

12 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Dialectic — which is the Intellect discrimi
nating the false and the true. It rests on the
observation of identity and diversity; for to
judge is to unite to an object the notion which
belongs to it." 1

This is a doctrine of the Republic and truth
fully reflects Plato's work. The Neo-Pla-
tonists of course accepted it and worked it
into their mystical scheme although they held
to the former idea of an ineffable One as the
superior conception. That is, in Neo-Pla-
tonism one finds a mystical system arising out
of an idealistic philosophy. The conception
of a science based on the knowledge of ideas
gave them idealism and truthfully reflected
Plato. The conception of an ineffable unity
of things above all knowledge necessitated a
mysticism; and this they professed to find in
Plato. Such criticism Emerson accepted and
hence the strong Neo-Platonic strain in his ap
preciation of Platonism.

Emerson's Platonism is broad enough, too,
to take in not only the Neo-Platonists but also
the earlier thinkers of Greece from Thales on
who antedate the appearance of Plato. In
these thinkers he found a crude symbolical

1 Complete Works, IV., 62.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 13

explanation of the absolute cause of things
which Neo-Platonism had taught him to con
sider above all knowledge. "The baffled in
tellect," he says, "must still kneel before this
cause, which refuses to be named — ineffable
cause, which every fine genius has essayed to
represent by some emphatic symbol, as, Thales
by water, Anaximines by air, Anaxagoras by
(NOVS) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and
the moderns by love; and the metaphor of
each has become a national religion." 1

Plato when viewed in connection with these
earlier Greek speculators is considered by
Emerson as the perfect expression of that
which they but inadequately stated ; he gave a
scientific account of what had before been
uttered symbolically. "Before Pericles came
the Seven Wise Masters," he writes, "and we
have the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics
and ethics; then the partialists — deducing
the origin of things from flux or water, or
from air, or from fire, or from mind. All
mix with these causes mythologic pictures.
At last comes Plato, the distributor, who needs
no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or whooping; for
he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast

1 Complete Works, III., 72-73.

H THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy
and intelligence. 'He shall be as a god to
me, who can rightly divide and define.' " l

In thus estimating the place of this early
speculation in the evolution of Greek thought
Emerson was developing to its utmost a prac
tice of Plato and the Platonists. In both are
found open critiques of the earlier philoso
phers. In Plotinus there is frequent refer
ence to the ancients and no opportunity is lost
by Proclus to identify the teaching of the
early schools with Platonism. And in Plato
Emerson found a criticism that set the old
thought in vivid contrast to Plato's own con
ceptions. In the Sophist the main speaker re
views the preceding philosophers and declares
that "each of them has related a fable to us, as
being boys." 2 This is the identical position
that Emerson takes regarding the early Hel
lenic thinkers.

Into the thought of these Greek thinkers
before Plato, Emerson was curious to inquire.
In Plutarch's Morals he found a rich mine
of quotation and comment in which the earlier
Greek philosophers figure conspicuously.

* Ibid., IV., 47-

2 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, III.,
240.

or THE
( UNIVERSITY /

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 15

"Plutarch occupies a unique place in liter
ature," Emerson writes, "as an encyclopaedia
of Greek and Roman antiquity. Whatever is
eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in
character, in institutions, in science — natural,
moral or metaphysical — or in memorable
sayings, drew his attention and came to his
pen with more or less fulness of record. He
is, among prose writers, what Chaucer is
among English poets, a repertory for those
who want the story without searching for it
at first hand — a compend of all accepted tra
ditions." 1 In the English Cudworth, too, '
Emerson found many fragments of ancient
thought. The work of this Cambridge Pla-
tonist of the seventeenth century — The True
Intellectual System of the Universe — was per
haps the first book to draw Emerson's atten
tion to Platonism.2 He read it for the "cita
tions from Plato and the philosophers," 3
but found the body of the work dull reading,
relieved only by the "magazine of quotations,
of extraordinary ethical sentences, the shining
summits of ancient philosophy." 4 Emerson

1 Complete Works, X., 297.

2 Ibid., IV, 294.

3 Ibid.
*/&«/., X., 516.

16 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

was also sufficiently interested in the early
Greek thinkers to study their systems as they
were outlined in De Gerando's Histoire Com-
paree des Systemes de Philosophic (1822).

These three sources, Plutarch, Cudworth
and De Gerando, were in Emerson's library.
Plutarch and Cudworth were great favorites
with Emerson; and Plutarch was of value to
him other than as a preserver of fragments of
ancient thought. His interpretation of cer
tain phases of Platonism was very acceptable
to Emerson. And yet it was the miscella
neous character of Plutarch that Emerson as
sociated with his work. "I confess that, in
reading him, I embrace the particulars, and
carry a faint memory of the argument or gen
eral design of the chapter; but he is not less
welcome, and he leaves the reader with a rel
ish and a necessity for completing his
studies." 1 Plutarch and Plato are the only
two of the ancient philosophers whom Emer
son dignified by special treatment. Plato has
the first place as philosopher in his Repre
sentative Men and for Goodwin's edition of
Plutarch's Morals (1871) Emerson wrote an
introduction. His own copy of Plutarch was

d., X., 303-304.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 17

the fifth London edition translated by several
hands and published in 1718.

Pythagoreanism is the most conspicuous
phase of ancient Greek thought antecedent to
Plato which Emerson blends with his con
ception of Platonism. According to the
Pythagoreans the universe is a harmony of
antagonizing opposites, of which they gave a
series of ten: limited and unlimited; odd and
even ; one and many; right and left; masculine
and feminine; rest and motion; straight and
crooked; light and darkness; good and evil;
square and oblong. The series is an arbitrary
mingling of mathematical, physical and eth
ical contrasts and is a deduction from their
primary theory that number is the principle
of things.

A trace of this way of looking at the consti
tution of the universe is found in Emerson's
exposition of Plato's teaching. Plato's rec
ognition of the ineffable unity of things, so
Emerson holds, is grounded on the cardinal
fact that unity, or identity, lies forever at the
base of things. Along with it is the second
fundamental conception, variety. "If specu
lation," he says, "tends thus to a terrific unity,
in which all things are absorbed, action tends

i8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

directly backwards to diversity. The first is
the course or gravitation of mind; the second
is the power of nature. Nature is the mani
fold. The unity absorbs, and melts or re
duces. Nature opens and creates. These
two principles reappear and interpenetrate
all things, all thought; the one, the many.
One is being; the other, intellect: one is neces
sity; the other freedom: one, rest; the other,
motion: one, power; the other, distribution:
one, strength; the other, pleasure: one, con
sciousness; the other, definition: one, genius;
the other, talent: one, earnestness; the other,
knowledge: one, possession; the other, trade:
one, caste; the other, culture: one, king; the
other, democracy: and, if we dare carry these
generalizations a step higher, and name the
last tendency of both, we might say, that the
end of the one is escape from organization —
pure science; and the end of the other is the
highest instrumentality, or use of means, or
executive deity." 1 In such a catalogue the
arbitrary balancing of opposites is quite in
keeping with the Pythagorean series.

Emerson found authority for thus devel
oping Plato's philosophy in the critical atti
tude of the Platonists toward Pythagorean

1 Complete Works, IV., 51-52.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 19

notions. To the Platonists Pythagoras was an
important name in the history of Hellenic
thought. "The mathematical disciplines,"
says Taylor in his introductory remarks on
Plato, "were invented by the Pythagoreans,
in order to a reminiscence of divine concerns,
to which through these as images, they en
deavor to ascend." 1 Plato, he adds, teaches
the same things through science. Such a view
reflects the critical manner of Proclus. It is
Pythagoric, according to him, to signify
divine concerns through images.2 And in his
Commentaries on the Timceus of Plato he
allegorizes Plato's account of the ancient war
between the Atlantics and the Athenians in
agreement with the Pythagorean notion of the
antagonism of elements constituting the uni
verse. Taylor summarizing the account
states that such a view is doubtless to be pre
ferred, as more consistent with the nature of
the dialogue, for it refers the story of the At
lantic war "to the opposition perpetually
flourishing in the universe between unity and
multitude, bound and infinity, sameness and
difference, motion and permanency, from

1 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, I.,
General Introduction, p. 37.

2 Ibid.

20 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

which all things, the first cause being excepted,
are composed." 1

Emerson had consulted De Gerando's His-
toire Comparee des Systemes de Philosophic
for a knowledge of Pythagorean beliefs and
he had found there an account of the series
of elements comprising the universe. The
idea was at once taken up, for it chimed in
with a favorite way of looking at things even
from boyhood when "he pleased himself as he
lay on his bed with the beauty of the Lord's
equilibrium in the Universe."2

His reading in Cousin, however, may have
had the effect of clinching this idea so that it
became a fixed one in his mind as he con
tinued his study of the Platonists. Emerson
tells us in 1833 that he had been reading
Cousin's lectures and he must have known
them in a translation, an Introduction to the
History of Philosophy, made by H. G. Lin-
berg (i832).3 In this work Cousin explains
the categories of the reason and shows how all
propositions are reduced to one proposition;
"that is, to the opposition between unity and
plurality, substance and phenomenon, being

1 Ibid., II., 432-433-

2 Complete Works, I., Biographical Sketch, p. 39.
s /&«/., V., 21.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 21

and appearance, identity and difference, and
the like." l The relation of unity and multi
plicity he dwells upon at some length. He
explains that these two fundamental ideas are
"two ideas contemporaneous in reason; two,
which reason cannot be without, and which
moreover arrive at the same time." 2 One
cannot be conceived — he adds — without the
other.

It is in the same strain that Emerson
speaks. "We unite all things by perceiving
the law that pervades them; by perceiving
the superficial differences and the profound
resemblances. But every mental act — this
very perception of identity or oneness, recog
nizes the difference of things. Oneness and
otherness. It is impossible to speak or think
without embracing both." 3

But whether Emerson is indebted to Cousin
or not, his fondness for balancing antagoniz
ing elements of thought is a characteristic of
his interpretation of one phase of Platonism.
And in so doing he was but following a habit
of the Platonists themselves. As in all his
appropriations from the philosophy of Plato,

2 P. 114.

8 Complete Works, IV., 48.

22 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

he develops the idea of the Pythagoreans in
characteristic fashion.

A thir_d_si_gnjj&cant phase of Emerson's in
terpretation of Platonic doctrine is due to his
acquaintance with the writings of Coleridge.
In Coleridge's Friend Emerson found an ac
count of a scientific method of thought which
was built partly on the philosophy of Plato
and partly on the teaching of Bacon. The
aim of Coleridge's work in his own words was
"to lay down and illustrate certain fundamen
tal distinctions and rules of intellectual action,
which, if well grounded and thoroughly
taken up and appropriated, will give to every
one the power of working out, under any cir
cumstances, the conclusions of truth for him
self." 1 In pursuing this aim Coleridge had
examined many systems of thought and had
finally ended in correlating the philosophy
of Bacon with that of Plato. "Thus the dif
ference, or rather distinction, between Plato
and Lord Bacon," Coleridge tells us, "is
simply this: that philosophy being neces
sarily bipolar, Plato treats principally of the
truth, as it manifests itself at the ideal pole,
as the science of intellect (de mundo Intel-

1 The Friend. Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Cole
ridge, II. Object and Plan of the Work, p. 8.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 23

ligibili) ; while Bacon confines himself, for
the most part, to the same truth, as it is mani
fested at the other or material pole, as the
science of nature (de mundo sensibili). It
is as necessary, therefore, that Plato should
direct his inquiries chiefly to those objective
truths that exist in and for the intellect alone,
the images and representatives of which we
construct for ourselves by figure, number, and
word; as that Lord Bacon should attach his
main concern to the truths which have their
-signatures in nature, and which (as he him
self plainly and often asserts) may indeed be
revealed to us through and with, but never by
the senses, or the faculty of sense." *

Owing to his acceptance of this reconcili
ation of Plato and Bacon, Emerson adopted,
as a fixed idea in all philosophic inquiry, the
correlation of matter and mind. In accord
ance with that idea he studied Plato and the
Platonists. The reading of Bacon was thus a
congenial task to accompany his study of
Plato. In Bacon's Advancement of Learning
Emerson found a conception of a First Phi
losophy that easily blended with Plato's ideal
of speculative inquiry. "Bacon, in the struc
ture of his mind," Emerson thus declares,

rf., II., 445-

24 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

"held of the analogists, of the idealists, or
(as we popularly say, naming from the best
example) Platonists." *

And so it comes about that an inquiry into
the working of Emerson's mind must con
sider the composite character of the Plato-
nism on which that mind was feeding. The
mysticism of Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists
generally — Plotinus being the heart of the
new school and the culmination of all Greek
philosophy — the ancient thought of those
early Greek philosophers preceding Plato,
especially that of Pythagoras — Plato being
considered as the logical outcome of their
speculations — and finally, the contention of
Coleridge that a philosophy of natural law
such as Bacon's is the co-ordinate of a purely
speculative theory of ideas — these are the
three media through which the teachings of
Plato were studied by Emerson and it should
not appear strange if in him the light from
Plato is somewhat refracted. Only by rec
ognizing the character of the sources from
which Emerson drew his material can we
hope to understand the part which Platonism
played in satisfying the needs of his mind.

A second consideration which must be

1 Complete Works, V., 239.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 25

borne in mind in a right understanding of
Emerson's relation to Plato and the Plato-
nists is the manner of Emerson's reading.
He was not a philosopher building up a sys
tem of thought. Hence he did not study the
sources of his Platonism as a professed student
of that philosophy whose chief aim is the un
derstanding of all the minutiae of Platonic
doctrine. It is impossible therefore to recon
struct from Emerson's writings a system of
Platonism; his mind was constitutionally un
fitted for the performance of such a task.
His independent spirit, too, forbade such a
proceeding. He used his books for their
service to his own spiritual needs. "Books
are the best of things, well used; abused,
among the worst. What is the right use?
What is the one end which all means go to
effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.
I had better never see a book than to be
warped by its attraction clean out of my own
orbit, and made a satellite instead of a sys
tem." 1 And thus in the reading of his Pla
tonic books he attends only to those portions
that appeal to him. "I think the Platonists
may be read for sentences," he explains,
"though the reader fails to grasp the argu-

1 Complete Works, I., 89-90.

26 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ment of the paragraph or chapter. He may
yet obtain gleams and glimpses of a more ex
cellent illumination from their genius, out
valuing the most distinct information he owes
to other books. For I hold that the grandeur
of the impression the stars and heavenly bodies
make on us is surely more valuable than our
exact perception of a tub or a table on the
ground." 1 And yet such reading is not like
the reading in the books he describes by the
term Vocabularies, such as Burton's Anatomy
of Melancholy. In such a book he occasion
ally found a fine sentence but "no high
method, no inspiring efflux." 2 And so in
characterizing his manner of reading in the
Platonists it must not be forgotten that he
read sympathetically enough to catch the
spirit of Platonism, even though he never
mastered his sources as a professed student
would have done.

It was also Emerson's habit to index his
books and to mark the places which held his
attention. Of course these indices are not ex
haustive, for they were intended for his own
personal reference. But they are very val
uable in indicating the exact passages in his

1 Ibid., VII., 409.

2 Ibid., VIL, 211.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 27

sources in which he found his "lustres."
Along with the marginal markings they show
how curious his reading was, for they lead
one into footnotes, introductions, and ap
pendices, from all of which he gathered ma
terial for some of his most distinctive work.
An examination of the marked passages alone
would indicate a lively interest on his part in
the matters they discuss, but when they are
studied in the light of his critical attitude to
ward Platonism they appear as veritable
sources of his thought.

Emerson is specific, too, in explaining the
peculiar influence which the Platonists ex
erted upon him. They were an intellectual
tonic. At the close of his essay, Intellect, he
pays the following tribute to these writers:
"I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the
intellect, without remembering that lofty and
sequestered class who have been its prophets
and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure
reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the
principles of thought from age to age. When
at long intervals we turn over these abstruse
pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air
of these few, these great spiritual lords who
have walked in the world — these of the old re
ligion — dwelling in a worship which makes

'

or THE
UNIVERSITY

or

ILIR

28 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the sanctities of Christianity look parvenues
and popular; for 'persuasion is in soul, but
necessity is in intellect.' This band of gran
dees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato,
Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius
and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their
logic, so primary in their thinking, that it
seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinc
tions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at
once poetry and music and dancing and as
tronomy and mathematics. I am present at
the sowing of the seed of the world. With a
geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foun
dations of nature. The truth and grandeur of
their thought is proved by its scope and ap
plicability, for it commands the entire
schedule and inventory of things for its illus
tration." l

Emerson also found a stimulant to the
imagination in reading these writers. "The
imaginative scholar," he writes in his essay,
Books, "will find few stimulants to his brain
like these writers. He has entered the
Elysian Fields; and the grand and pleasing
figures of gods and daemons and daemoni-
acal men, of the 'azonic' and the 'aquatic
gods/ daemons with fulgid eyes, and all the

1 Complete Works, II., 345, 346.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 29

rest of the Platonic rhetoric, exalted a little
under the African sun, sail before his eyes.
The acolyte has mounted the tripod over the
cave at Delphi; his heart dances, his sight is
quickened. These guides speak of the gods
with such depth and with such pictorial de
tails, as if they had been bodily present at the
Olympian feasts. The reader of these books
makes new acquaintance with his own mind ;
new regions of thought are opened." 1

Plato does not seem to have dazzled Emer
son in the way in which his brilliant friends,
the Neo-Platonists did. "Plato is a gowns
man," he writes ; "his garment, though of pur
ple, and almost sky-woven, is an academic
robe and hinders action with its voluminous
folds." 2 Again he says of Plato, "He never
writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into poetic
raptures." 3 And yet the reading of Plato
was at times a most solemn event in Emer
son's life. He told one friend that it was a
great day in a man's life when he first read the
Symposium.4' Again, he explains that "the
scholar must look long for the right hour for

1 Ibid., VII., 203.

2 Ibid., IV., 123.

3 Ibid., IV., 61.

., IV., 307.

30 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Plato's Timaeus. At last the elect morning
arrives, the early dawn — a few lights con
spicuous in the heaven, as of a world just
created and still becoming — and in its wide
leisures we dare open that book." * And to
Carlyle he writes : "I had it fully in my heart
to write at large leisure in noble mornings,
opened by prayer, or by readings of Plato or
whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning
Muse." 2 Plato, then, though not so dazzling
a power over his mind and imagination as the
Neo-Platonists, was still a great inspiration.
The qualifying language which he uses in
speaking of him is due to the fact that as con
trasted with the Platonists, Plato lacks the
ecstasy in which Neo-Platonism as a system
of mysticism lives and moves and has its being.
More evidence of like nature to that already
adduced can be found in Emerson's utter
ances but sufficient has been given to justify
the belief in the importance of Platonism as
a molding power in Emerson's thinking.
By approaching his work and his Platonic
sources in the spirit in which he himself came
to the task one is able to come to a fair notion

*Ibid., VII., 169-170.

2 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo
Emerson, II., 2.

EMERSON'S PLATONISM 31

of his indebtedness to Plato and his school.
And although one can not reconstruct a co
ordinated scheme of Platonism from Emer
son's work, one need not accept the view of
Cabot, his biographer and friend, who writes:
uln general, to look for the source of any way
of thinking of his in the Neo-Platonists, or in
any of the books he read, seems to me like
tracing the origin of Jacob Behmen's illumi
nation to the glitter of the pewter tankard
which, he says, awakened in him the con
sciousness of divine things." 1 The golden
way lies somewhere between this negation and
the other; only on a careful analysis of his
work will the way be revealed.

1 A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, L, 291.

CHAPTER II

NATURE

THE dualism in which the speculation of
the Platonists culminates underlies Em
erson's conception of the constitution of things.
"What the world ends in, therefore," writes
Plotinus, "is matter and reason, but that from
which it arose, and by which it is governed,
is soul." 1 In similar strain Emerson opens
his exposition of the nature of the universe
with the statement that "philosophically con
sidered, the universe is composed of Nature
and the Soul." 2 These two elements — na
ture and soul — are the poles of Emerson's
thought as a philosopher concerned with the
ultimate postulates of thinking. Nature was
the first topic that engaged his attention, al
though his final word on the subject was not
spoken until he had elaborated his conception
of soul.

In his Platonic sources there was a wealth

1 Five Books of Plotinus, 123.

2 Complete Works, L, 4.

32

NATURE 33

of speculation on nature. Plato himself had
left in his Timceus an account of natural phi
losophy of which the portion dealing with the
conception of matter, or space, became of
prime importance to Plotinus in his specula
tion on the same subject. In the third selec
tion from Plotinus' Enneads contained in
Taylor's translation of the Select Works,
Emerson found a full outline of the position
of Plotinus on this great topic. Proclus, too,
had reviewed the subject as it was handled by
the chief Greek thinkers and the passage con
taining his account Emerson had indexed
under "Nature" in his own copy of The Com
mentaries of Proclus on the Timceus of
Plato.1 Plutarch had embodied a mass of
opinion on nature in his Morals.2 Emer
son did not esteem the bulk of these opinions
very highly; he thought them very crude;
many of them puerile. But, he fails not to
add, "Usually, when Thales, Anaximenes or
Anaximander are quoted, it is really a good
judgment." 3 In Ocellus Lucanus, Emerson
had a short treatise on the nature of the uni
verse. And finally in Cudworth he found a

1 1., 8-10.

2 Morals, III., 104-193.

3 Complete Works, X., 310.

34 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Digression Concerning the Plastic Life of
Nature, or an Artificial, Orderly and Me
thodical Nature.1

From this Digression Emerson extracted a
quotation from Plotinus which he used as a
motto for the first edition of Nature. "Na
ture is but an image or imitation of wisdom,
the last thing of the soul; Nature being a
thing which doth only do, but not know." 2
The original extract from Cudworth which
yielded Emerson his sentence reads: "How
doth wisdom differ from that which is called
nature? Verily in this manner, that wisdom
is the first thing, but nature the last and low
est; for nature is but an image or imitation
of wisdom, the last thing of the soul, which
hath the lowest impress of reason shining upon
it; as when a thick piece of wax is thoroughly
impressed upon by a seal, that impress, which
is clean and distinct in the superior super
ficies of it, will in the lower side be weak
and obscure; and such is the stamp and signa
ture of nature, compared with that of wisdom
and understanding, nature being a thing
which doth only do, but not know." 3 Later

1 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 217-
280.

2 Complete Works, I., 403-404.

3 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 240.

NATURE 35

editions of Nature appeared without this
motto; but the firstling of Emerson's mind
nevertheless testifies to its author's indebted
ness to Platonism.

In the quotation from Plotinus is found the
conception which characterizes one phase of
Emerson's treatment of Nature. This phase
is given in his theory of symbolism. Briefly
put, the theory can be stated in three proposi
tions: (i) "Words are signs of natural
facts." (2) "Particular natural facts are
symbols of particular spiritual facts." (3)
"Nature is the symbol of Spirit." 1

Each of these statements summarizes a
teaching of Platonism with which Emerson's
reading had made him familiar. In his
Cratylus Plato sets forth the notion of the
philosophical import of words to the effect
that they are imitations of real things; or as
Socrates says, "names properly imposed are
like the things, of which they are the names
laid down, and are resemblances of the
things." 2 Here is the source of Emerson's
teaching of the symbolic nature of words.

The symbolism of things is a recognized
tenet of the Platonists. Plutarch, especially,

1 Complete Works, I.. 25.

2 Bohn translation, III., 391.

36 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

is given to elucidating the symbolical meaning
of myths, and in his essay, Of Isis and Osiris,
busies himself in unfolding the philosophical
import of the rites of the ancient Egyptians.
In doing so he justifies himself by an appeal
to the method of the Pythagoreans. "If,
therefore," he urges, "the most approved of
the philosophers did not think meet to pass
over or disesteem any significant symbol of
the Divinity which they observed even in
things that had neither soul nor body, I be
lieve they regarded yet more those properties
of government and conduct which they saw
in such natures as had sense, and were endued
with soul, with passion, and with moral
temper. We are not, therefore, to content
ourselves with worshipping these things, but
we must worship God through them — as
being the more clear mirrors of him, and pro
duced by Nature — so as ever worthily to
conceive of them as instruments or artifices
of that God which orders all things." *

So, too, do Emerson and the Platonists
agree in the most universal form of statement
— namely, that nature is the symbol of spirit.
In the Timceus of Plato the Creator is repre-

1 Morals, IV., 134.

NATURE 37

sented as fabricating the world after an
eternal, intelligible pattern of which this
world becomes an image. "To discover, then,
the Creator and Father of this universe," says
the Timceus, "as well as his work, is indeed
difficult; and when discovered, it is impossi
ble to reveal him to mankind at large. And
this, too, we must consider respecting him,
according to which of two patterns he mod
elled the world; whether with reference to
one subsisting ever in a state of sameness and
similarly affected, or with reference to one
that is only generated. If this world then
is beautiful and its artificer good, he evidently
looked to an eternal pattern, but if it be with
out beauty, and what it is not lawful to men
tion, he must have looked to one that is
generated. It is evident, however, to every
one that he looked to one that was eternal;
for the universe is the most beautiful of gen
erated things, and its artificer the best of
causes. Being thus generated, then, it has
been framed according to principles that can
be comprehended by reason and reflection,
and ever abides in sameness of being." 1
Stated in the language of Emerson this idea

1 Bohn translation, II., 332-333-

38 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

underlies the third proposition of his sym
bolical teaching, namely, that nature is a sym
bol of spirit.

Thus far the universe has been viewed as it
is seen manifested in space, or in its material
phase; but Plato's speculation attended to it
as it appears under the aspect of time. And
just as the substance of the world has a spirit
ual counterpart, so the world in time is re
lated to a spiritual reality, called eternity.
Thus Plato speaks of the world: "When the
parent Creator perceived that this created
image of the eternal gods had life and mo
tion, he was delighted with his work, and by
this very delight he was led to consider how
he might make it still more to resemble its
exemplar. Hence, as the intelligible universe
was an eternal animal, he tried to make this
[the sensible universe], as far as he could,
similarly perfect. The nature indeed of the
animal itself was eternal, and this nature
could not be entirely adopted into anything
subject to generation; hence God resolved
to form a certain movable image of eternity;
and thus, while he was disposing the parts of
the universe, he, out of that eternity which
rests in unity, formed an eternal image on the

NATURE 39

principle of numbers; and to this we give
the appellation of Time." 1

This conception of time as the image of
eternity Emerson lays down as the funda
mental one in his Lecture on the Times.
"The Times, as we say — or the present aspects
of our social state, the Laws, Divinity, Natu
ral Science, Agriculture, Art, Trade, Letters,
have their root in an invisible spiritual real
ity. To appear in these aspects, they must
first exist, or have some necessary foundation.
Beside all the small reasons we assign, there
is a great reason for the existence of every
extant fact; a reason which lies grand and
immovable, often unsuspected, behind it in
silence. The Times are the masquerade of
the Eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of
noble and majestic agents to the wise ; the re
ceptacle in which the Past leaves its history;
the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is
building up the Future." 2

Symbolism is an attempt to express the
spiritual meaning of the world, to see in it
a reflection of spiritual reality. It is a theory
that appeals to the feeling for art, since the

1 The Tim&us, Bohn translation, II., 340-341.

2 Complete Works, I., 259.

40 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

world of things according to its teaching be
comes an imitation of a spiritual world of
pure intelligence. In Emerson's hands the
theory assumes a literary value; and thus the
end which nature serves when viewed sym
bolically is called by him language. The
final use which he makes of the theory does
not appear in his Nature; there the theory is
merely a stage through which he passes in his
interpretation of the meaning of the universe.
Later the same theory will reappear in his
conception of art.

A second theory of the meaning of nature is
based upon the relation of the world of mat
ter to the world of mind. This relation
underlies symbolism; but in the new state
ment which Emerson makes the terms are
changed. Nature is conceived as an orderly
system of laws executing themselves and mind
is viewed as an invisible world in which ideas
are the final realities. By correlating these
two terms, the laws of nature and the ideas
of the mind, Emerson gets his new theory.
"The uneasiness which the thought of our
helplessness in the chain of causes occasions
us," he writes, "results from looking too much
at one condition of nature, namely, Motion.
But the drag is never taken from the wheel.

NATURE 41

Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or
Identity insinuates its compensation. All
over the wide fields of earth grows the pru
nella or self-heal. After every foolish day
we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours;
and though we are always engaged with par
ticulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring
with us to every experiment the innate uni
versal laws. These, while they exist in the
mind as ideas, stand around us in nature for
ever embodied, a present sanity to expose and
cure the insanity of men." 1 That is, laws
of nature are correlative to ideas of mind.

In such a theory the doctrine of ideas as
set forth in Plato is apparent; but the form
which the theory takes in Emerson is due to
Coleridge's reworking of Plato's theory.
Emerson himself has left a passage which
proves this connection with Plato through
Coleridge. "But the philosopher, not less
than the poet," he explains in Nature, "post
pones the apparent order and relations of
things to the empire of thought. 'The prob
lem of philosophy/ according to Plato, 'is,
for all that exists conditionally, to find a
ground unconditioned and absolute.' It pro
ceeds on the faith that a law determines all

1 Complete Works, III., 194-195.

42 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

phenomena, which being known, the phe
nomena can be predicted. That law, when in
the mind, is an idea." 1

The source of this quotation is found in
Coleridge's Friend, where the theory of cor
relation was fully stated for Emerson: "The
grand problem, the solution of which forms,
according to Plato, the final object and dis
tinctive character of philosophy, is this: for
all that exists conditionally (that is, the ex
istence of which is inconceivable except under
the condition of its dependency on some other
as its antecedent) to find a ground that is un
conditional and absolute, and thereby to
reduce the aggregate of human knowledge
to a system. For the relation common to all
being known, the appropriate orbit of each
becomes discoverable, together with its pecul
iar relations to its concentrics in the common
sphere of subordination. Thus the centrality
of the sun having been established, and the law
of the distances of the planets from the sun
having been determined, we possess the
means of calculating the distance of each from
the other. But as all objects of sense are in
continual flux, and as the notices of them by
the senses must, as far as they are true notices,

^Complete Works, I., 55.

NATURE 43

change with them, while scientific principles
or laws are no otherwise principles of science
than as they are permanent and always the
same, the latter were appropriated to the pure
reason, either as its products or as implanted
in it. And now the remarkable fact forces
itself on our attention, namely, that the ma
terial world is found to obey the same laws as
had been deduced independently from the
reason; and that the masses act by a force
which can not be conceived to result from
the component parts, known or imaginable.
In magnetism, electricity, galvanism, and in
chemistry generally, the mind is led instinct
ively, as it were, to regard the working powers
as conducted, transmitted, or accumulated by
the sensible bodies, and not as inherent. This
fact has, at all times, been the stronghold
alike of the materialists and of the spiritual
ists, equally solvable by the two contrary
hypotheses, and fairly solved by neither. In
the clear and masterly review of the elder
philosophers, which must be ranked among
the most splendid proofs of his judgment no
less than of his genius, and more expressly in
the critique on the atomic or corpuscular doc
trine of Democritus and his followers as the
one extreme, and in that of the pure rational-

44 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ism of Zeno the Eleatic as the other, Plato
has proved incontrovertibly that in both alike
the basis is too narrow to support the super
structure; that the grounds of both are false
or disputable; and that if these were con
ceded, yet neither the one nor the other
scheme is adequate to the solution of the prob
lem — namely, what is the ground of the coin
cidence between reason and experience; or
between the laws of matter and the ideas of
the pure intellect. The only answer which
Plato deemed the question capable of receiv
ing, compels the reason to pass out of itself
and seek the ground of this agreement in a
supersensual essence, which being at once
the ideal of the reason and the cause of the
material world, is the pre-establisher of the
harmony in and between both." *

To make his statement clearer Coleridge
adds in a note: "I now more especially en
treat the reader's attention to the sense in
which here, and everywhere through this
essay, I use the word idea, I assert, that the
very impulse to universalize any phenomenon
involves the prior assumption of some efficient
law in nature, which in a thousand different

1 The Friend. The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, II., 420-422.

NATURE 45

forms is evermore one and the same, entire in
each, yet comprehending all, and incapable
of being abstracted or generalized from any
number of phcenomena, because it is itself
pre-supposed in each and all as their common
ground and condition, and because every defi
nition of a genus is the adequate definition
of the lowest species alone, while the efficient
law must contain the ground of all in all.
It is attributed, never derived. The utmost
we ever venture to say is, that the falling of
an apple suggested the law of gravitation to
Sir I. Newton. Now a law and an idea are
correlative terms, and differ only as object and
subject, as being and truth." 1

This is the manner in which Emerson con
siders the question of nature. First in im
portance of the influences upon the mind of
the scholar is that of nature; and this influ
ence, Emerson goes on to explain, leads the
scholar to settle upon the value of nature to
him, which is revealed only when he begins
to study her meaning. "Classification be
gins," Emerson says. "To the young mind
every thing is individual, stands by itself.
By and by, it finds how to join two things

1 The Friend. The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, II., 424.

46 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and see in them one nature ; then three, then
three thousand, and so, tyrannized over by its
own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things
together, diminishing anomalies, discovering
roots running under ground whereby con
trary and remote things cohere and flower out
from one stem. . . . But what is classifi
cation but the perceiving that these objects
are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have
a law which is also a law of the human
mind?" 1

Such correlation of nature and mind is
everywhere present in Emerson's work: it
is one of his fixed ideas. As a moralist he
sees in the theory a proof of the essentially
ethical character of all natural law. On this
he insists. "The world is emblematic. Parts
of speech are metaphors, because the whole
of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
The laws of moral nature answer to those of
matter as face to face in a glass. The visible
world and the relation of its parts, is the dial
plate of the invisible.' The axioms of physics
translate the laws of ethics. Thus 'the whole
is greater than its part;' 'reaction is equal to
action;' 'the smallest weight may be made to
lift the greatest, the difference of weight be-

1 Complete Works, I., 85-86.

NATURE 47

ing compensated by time ;' and many the like
propositions, which have an ethical as well as
physical sense. These propositions have a
much more extensive and universal sense
when applied to human life, than when con
fined to technical use." 1

This ethical interpretation of natural laws
is a favorite exercise with Emerson. The
specific instances of the correlation of mind
and matter he calls "by-laws of the mind." a
As example he dwells on the correspondence
of gravity to truth. "The first quality we
know in matter," he writes in explanation of
the equivalence of the soul to nature, "is cen-
trality — we call it gravity — which holds the
universe together, which remains pure and
indestructible in each mote as in masses and
planets, and from each atom rays out illimita
ble influence. To this material essence an
swers Truth, in the intellectual world —
Truth, whose center is everywhere and its
circumference nowhere, whose existence we
cannot disimagine; the soundness and health
of things, against which no blow can be struck
but it recoils on the striker; Truth, on whose
side we always heartily are. And the first

rf., I., 32-33.
2 Ibid., XII., 15.

48 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

measure of a mind is its centrality, its capac
ity of truth, and its adhesion to it." 1

Other instances of analogies between the
natural and the moral worlds are to be found
in his paralleling diamagnetism, or cross
magnetism, of gases with a law of personality
which he calls bias.2 The chemical rule —
corpora non agunt nisi soluta — he says holds
true in mind.3 In fact, a long series of such
analogies drawn from the laws of physics and
vegetation constitutes a considerable part of
what Emerson loves to call the Natural His
tory of Intellect.4

The suggestion to gather such by-laws of
the mind arose in Emerson's mind as a result
of his reading in Bacon. Coleridge had
placed Bacon side by side with Plato and had
pointed out the relation of his natural phi
losophy to Plato's system of ideas. Whether
or not first directed to Bacon by Coleridge,
Emerson certainly used Bacon in accordance
with Coleridge's theory of correlation and
came to associate Bacon's philosophy with
that of Plato.

1 Complete Works, VIII., 221.

2 Ibid., VIIL, 306.

., XL, 533-

., XII., 23 et sq.

NATURE 49

In his review of Bacon's work Emerson
notes that Bacon "explained himself by giving
various quaint examples of the summary or
common laws of which each science has its
own illustration." 1 This is a reference to a
passage in the Advancement of Learning
which Bacon cites in his explanation of the
province of a First Philosophy. This phi
losophy Bacon says is to be "a receptacle for
all such profitable observations and axioms as
fall not within the compass of any of the
special parts of philosophy or sciences, but
are more common and of a higher stage." 2

As instances of such observations and ax
ioms he gives the following: "For example;
is not the rule 'Si inasqualibus aequalia addas,
omnia erunt inaequalia,' an axiom as well of
justice as of mathematics? And is there not
a true coincidence between commutative and
distributive justice, and arithmetical and geo
metrical proportion? Is not that other rule,
'Quae in eodem tertio conveniunt, et inter se
conveniunt,' a rule taken from the mathe
matics, but so potent in logic as all syllogisms
are built upon it? Is not the observation,
'Omnia mutantur, nil interit,' a contempla-

d., V., 240.
2 The Works of Francis Bacon, II., 126.

50 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tion, in philosophy thus, that the quantum of
nature is eternal? in natural theology thus,
that it requireth the same omnipotence to
make somewhat nothing, which at the first
made nothing somewhat? according to the
Scripture, 'Didici quod omnia opera, quae
fecit Deus, perseverunt in perpetuum; non
possumus eis quicquam addere nee auferre.'
Is not the ground, which Machiavel wisely
and largely discourseth concerning govern
ments, that the way to establish and preserve
them is to reduce them (ad principia,' a rule
in religion and nature, as well as in civil ad
ministration? Was not the Persian magic a
reduction or correspondence of the principles
and architectures of nature to the rules and
policy of government? Is not the precept of
a musician, to fall from a discord or harsh
accord upon a concord or sweet accord, alike
true in affection? Is not the trope of music,
to avoid or slide from the close or cadence,
common with the trope of rhetoric of deceiv
ing expectation? Is not the delight of the
quavering upon a stop in music the same with
the playing of light upon the water?

'Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus:'

NATURE 51

Are not the organs of the senses of one kind
with the organs of reflection, the eye with a
glass, the ear with a cave or strait determined
and bounded? Neither are those only simili
tudes, as men of narrow observation may con
ceive them to be, but the same footsteps of
nature, treading or printing upon several
subjects or matters. This science, therefore,
as I understand it, I may justly report as de
ficient; for I see sometimes the profounder
sort of wits, in handling some particular
argument, will now and then draw a bucket
of water out of this well for their present use ;
but the spring head thereof seemeth to me
not to have been visited; being of so excellent
use, both for the disclosing of nature, and the
abridgement of art." 1

Emerson's by-laws of the mind are not so
quaint, to use his own expression, as Bacon's,
but they are open imitations of Bacon's man
ner. They show how fruitful Coleridge's
correlation of the Platonic and Baconian phi
losophy was in suggesting to Emerson the
practice of seeking the ethical meaning of the
laws of nature. Emerson had no love of
science in and for itself, but in the results of

1 The Works of Francis Bacon, II., 126-128.

52 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

science he found much to satisfy his spiritual
needs when those results could be seen to have
significance for morals.

This means that Emerson held consistently
to the sovereignty of ethics, by which he
meant the supremacy of the moral or intel
lectual world over the world of outward
nature. Speaking of the laws of the natural
world as perpetual forces, he says: "These
forces are in an ascending series, but seem to
leave no room for the individual ; man or
atom, he only shares them; he sails the way
these irresistible winds blow. But behind
all these finer elements, the sources of them,
and much more rapid and strong; a new style
and series, the spiritual. Intellect and morals
appear only the material forces on a higher
plane. The laws of material nature run up
into the invisible world of the mind, and
hereby we acquire a key to those sublimities
which skulk and hide in the caverns of human
consciousness. And in the impenetrable mys
tery which hides — and hides through absolute
transparency — the mental nature, I await the
insight which our advancing knowledge of
material laws shall furnish." 1

By reason of Coleridge's correlation Em-

1 Complete Works, X., 72.

NATURE 53

erson was able to speak of laws in the same
manner as Plato treats ideas. These ideas of
Plato's are the sole realities and they are
known only by the intellect. They are
grouped together in the intelligible world
and, though they seem independent, there is
one idea supreme among them. This is the
idea of the Good. It is the chief end of all
man's endeavors; the final satisfaction for
which he strives. It is also the cause of ex
istence to all things and of all knowledge that
man can know. It is also the principle of
unity both in the world of objective things and
in the conscious life of intellect in man.
Using the analogy of the sun in the visible
world, Plato thus explains his conception:
"That therefore which imparts truth to what
is known, and dispenses the faculty of knowl
edge to him who knows, you may call the idea
of the good and the principle of science and
truth, as being known through intellect. And
as both these — knowledge and truth — are so
beautiful, you will be right in thinking that
the good is something different, and still
more beautiful than these. Science and truth
here are as light and sight there, which we
rightly judged to be sun-like, but yet did not
think them to be the sun: so here it is right

54 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

to hold that both of them partake of the form
of the good, but yet not right to suppose that
either of them is the good — inasmuch as the
good itself is worthy of still greater honour.
. . . You will say, I think, that the sun
imparts to things which are seen, not only
their visibility, but likewise their generation,
growth and nourishment, though not itself
generation? Of course. We may say, there
fore, as to things cognizable by the intellect,
that they became cognizable not only from the
good, by which they are known, but likewise
that their being and essence are thence de
rived, while the good itself is not essence, but
beyond essence, and superior to it both in dig
nity and power." *

Parallel to this conception is Emerson's
idea of the universe. He believes in the real
ity of an intelligible world, but it is a world
of laws. And just as Plato had found the
idea of the good giving unity to the ideas in
the intelligible world, so Emerson finds uni
versal good saturating all the laws of the
universe and binding them into unity. "I
find the survey of the cosmical powers a doc
trine of consolation in the dark hours of
private or public fortune. It shows us the

1 The Republic, Bohn translation, II., IQ&-I99.

NATURE 55

world alive, guided, incorruptible; that its
cannon cannot be stolen nor its virtues mis
applied. It shows us the long Providence,
the safeguards of rectitude. It animates ex
ertion. . . . This world belongs to the
energetical. It is a fagot of laws, and a true
analysis of these laws, showing how immortal
and how self-protecting they are, would be a
wholesome lesson for every time and for this
time. That band which ties them together is
unity, is universal good, saturating all with
one being and aim, so that each translates the
other, is only the same spirit applied to new
departments. Things are saturated with the
moral law." 1

"It is essential to a true theory of nature and
of man," says Emerson, "that it should contain
somewhat progressive." 2 Holding to such a
conception he was not at rest in stating the
problem of nature until he had examined her
method. Symbolism and correlation are the
ories that account for the meaning of nature:
they tell what she is ; but they do not let one
into the secret of the life which gives nature
her method. Therefore Emerson passes on to
consider what this method of nature is; and

1 Complete Works, X., 85-86.

2 Ibid., I., 61.

56 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

he still finds in Platonism the suggestions for
all his teachings on this new topic.

At the basis of his thinking on the method
of nature lies the doctrine of flux. This is an
inheritance of Plato and the Platonists from
the early philosophy of Heraclitus. As Soc
rates remarks in the Gratylus, "Heracleitus
says somewhere that all things move, and
nothing is at rest; and comparing things to
the flowing of a river, observes that 'Thou
canst not twice into the same stream go.' " 1
Or, as Plotinus quotes Heraclitus, "bodies are
always rising into existence, or becoming to
be, and flowing." 2 This idea of flux Plato,
and after him the Platonists, incorporated into
their theory of the sensible world. In the
Timceus the idea finds its fullest statement.
"In the first place, then, what we now denomi
nate water, on becoming condensed, seems to
take the form of stones and earth, — and when
melted and dispersed, that of vapour and air;
air also when burnt up, becomes fire, while
the latter again, on becoming condensed and
extinct, resumes the form of air; and again
air, when collected and condensed, produces

1 The Works of Plato, Bohn translation, III., 318.

2 Select Works of Plotinus, 276.

NATURE 57

mists and clouds, from which, when still more
compressed, rain descends; and from water
again are formed earth and stones; the
whole of them, as it seems, exchanging all
round their mutual generation.

"As these, then, never maintain any con
stancy of existence, who will have the assur
ance to maintain that any one of them is this
rather than that? No one, and it would be
far the safest plan to speak about them as fol
lows: When we see anything constantly
passing from one state of existence to another,
as fire for instance, we should not say that it
is fire absolutely, but something fiery — and
again, that what we call water is not absolutely
so, but something watery; without assigning
to them any names that would give the idea
of stability, as we think people do, when they
express it by this and that; for not being of
an abiding nature, it cannot endure to have
applied to it such terms as, this thing, of this
nature, belonging to this; and any such others
as would show it to have a substantive exist
ence. Hence we should not give anyone of
them an individual name, but call it some
thing such-like, but ever fluctuating; and es
pecially with respect to fire, we should assert

58 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

that it is wholly such-like, and similarly like
wise, everything endued with generation." 1

Emerson reflects this conception of the flux
of things in his view of the eternal cycle of
change manifested in the universe. "All
things are flowing," he writes, "even those
that seem immovable. The adamant is al
ways passing into smoke. The plants imbibe
the materials which they want from the
air and the ground. They burn, that is, ex
hale and decompose their own bodies into the
air and earth again. The animal burns, or
undergoes the like perpetual consumption.
The earth burns, the mountains burn and de
compose, slower, but incessantly. It is almost
inevitable to push the generalization up into
higher parts of Nature, rank over rank into
sentient beings. Nations burn with eternal
fire of thought and affection, which wastes
while it works. We shall find finer combus
tion and finer fuel. Intellect is a fire: rash
and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house
which is called man." 2

In this flux of things the constant substance
is law. "Thin or solid, everything is in flight.
I believe this conviction makes the charm of

1 The Works of Plato, Bohn translation, II., 355-356.

2 Complete Works, VII., 145.

NATURE 59

chemistry — that we have the same avoirdu
pois matter in an alembic, without a vestige
of the old form; and in animal transforma
tion not less, as in grub and fly, in egg and
bird, in embryo and man; everything undress
ing and stealing away from its old into new
form, and nothing fast but those invisible
cords which we call laws, on which all is
strung. Then we see that things wear differ
ent names and faces, but belong to one family;
that the secret cords or laws show their well-
known virtue through every variety, be it ani
mal, or plant, or planet, and the interest is
gradually transferred from the forms to the
lurking method." l

Such a view corresponds to Plato's reason
ing from the instability of the flux of sensible
things to the necessary existence of the idea,
"which subsists according to sameness, unpro-
duced and not subject to decay; receiving
nothing into itself from elsewhere, and itself
never entering into any other nature, but in
visible and imperceptible by the senses, and
to be apprehended only by pure intellect."2
The only variation to be noted is that Emer
son makes law the permanent substance amid

1 Complete Works, VIII., 5.

2 The Timaus, Bohn translation, II., 358.

60 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

all change. But this had been made in ac
cordance with Coleridge's statement of the re
lation of the science of natural history to the
science of intellect; they are correlative
sciences and law which is the object of inquiry
in the one is a correlative of idea, or the end
of inquiry, in the other. By adopting this
theory Emerson was able to restate the doc
trine of flux in order to show that law is the
only fixed thing we know in nature.

But Emerson has another way of hand
ling the idea of flux. Plotinus had used the
doctrine to testify to the unreality of the
world of sensible things as opposed to the
reality of soul. Emerson follows him, as
well as Plato; in fact, in his treatment of
flux Emerson is more frequently following
the ideas of Plotinus than of the older
philosopher. For in Emerson the idea of
flux is often associated with spirit or mind.
Nature, he holds, is "always the effect, mind
the flowing cause." 1 "Nature is not fixed
but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it." 2
His treatment, then, leads to a discussion of
the spiritual life of the universe which flows

1 Complete Works, VIIL, 223.

2 Ibid., I., 76.

NATURE 61

through all things, animate and inanimate.
The idea of flux is thus spiritualized.

The simplest form his idea takes is given
in his Two Rivers, in which he sets forth life
as a flux.

"Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,

Repeats the music of the rain;

But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

"Thou in thy narrow banks are pent;
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament,
Through light, through life, it forward flows.

"I see the inundations sweet,
I hear the spending of the stream
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and
dream.

"Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.

62 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

"So forth and brighter fares my stream —
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness stains its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain." 1

In setting forth this idea of flux in more de
tail Emerson draws upon the doctrine of
emanation as it was explained by Plotinus.
Thus the flux of natural things becomes an
emanation from a divine source. "The
method of nature," he writes ; "who could ever
analyze it? That rushing stream will not
stop to be observed. We can never surprise
nature in a corner; never find the end of a
thread; never tell where to set the first stone.
The bird hastens to lay her egg; the egg
hastens to be a bird. The wholeness we ad
mire in the order of the world is the result of
infinite distribution. Its smoothness is the
smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its
permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every
natural fact is an emanation, and that from
which it emanates is an emanation also, and
from every emanation is a new emanation,
If anything could stand still, it would be
crushed and dissipated by the torrent it re
sisted, and if it were a mind, would be crazed ;

1 Complete Works, IX., 248.

NATURE 63

as insane persons are those who hold fast to
one thought and do not flow with the course
of nature. Not the cause, but an ever-novel
effect, nature descends always from above.
It is unbroken obedience. The beauty of
these fair objects is imported into them from
a metaphysical and eternal spring. In all
animal and vegetable forms, the physiologist
concedes that no chemistry, no mechanics, can
account for the facts, but a mysterious princi
ple of life must be assumed, which not only
inhabits the organ but makes the organ." 1

Such an interpretation of the method of
nature is a result of Emerson's reworking of
the emanation theory of Plotinus in keeping
with the primary notion of the flux of things.
Instead of a ceaseless flux on a low plain of
absolutely meaningless change, which the sim
ple doctrine of flux amounts to, there is an
endless flowing of things out of an eternal and
metaphysical spring which is the divine
source of all the fluxions. The latter concep
tion finds its source in Plotinus' account of
the emanation of things from the one absolute
principle. "What, then," he writes of this
principle, "shall we say he is? The power
of all things, without whose subsistence the

1 Complete Works, I., 199-200.

64 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

universality of things would never have had a
being; nor would intellect have been, which
is the first and universal life; for that which
subsists above life is the cause of life, since the
energy of life which is all things, is not the
first, but emanates this principle as its ineffa
ble fountain. Conceive then a fountain pos
sessing no other principle, but imparting itself
to all rivers, without being exhausted by any
one of them, and abiding quietly in itself; but
the streams which emanate from this fountain,
before they flow in different directions, as yet
abiding together, and, as it were, already
knowing what rivulets will proceed from their
defluxions." *

According to another way of viewing the
subject the method of nature is identified with
the manifestation of the divine Presence rush
ing through the world in eternal progress. In
such a conception the theory of evolution is
felt but ancient philosophy still more. In
Cudworth Emerson had noted an explanation
of the universe conceived in the manner of the
Platonists as TO TO*, or God. "TO nav, or
'the universe,' " says Cudworth, "was fre
quently taken by the pagan theologers also, as
we have already intimated, in a more com-

1 Five Books of Plotinus, 237.

NATURE 65

prehensive sense, for the Deity, together with
all the extent of its fecundity, God as display
ing himself in the world; or, for God and the
world both together; the latter being looked
upon as nothing but an emanation or efflux
from the former . . . And according
to this sense was the god Pan understood both
by the Arcadians and the other Greeks, not
for the mere corporeal world as senseless and
inanimate, nor as endued with a plastic na
ture only (though this was partly included in
the notion of Pan also), but as proceeding
from a rational and intellectual principle,
diffusing itself through all; or for the whole
system of things, God and the world together,
as one deity." 1

With this idea in mind Emerson has his
pine tree sing of the method of nature:

" 'Harken once more !

I will tell thee the mundane lore.
Older am I than thy numbers wot,
Change I may, but I pass not.
Hitherto all things fast abide,
And anchored in the tempest ride.
Trenchant time behooves to hurry
All to yean and all to bury:

1 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 582.

66 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

All the forms are fugitive,

But the substances survive.

Ever fresh the broad creation,

A divine improvisation,

From the heart of god proceeds,

A single will, a million deeds.

Once slept the world an egg of stone,

And pulse, and sound, and light was none;

And God said, "Throb !" and then was motion

And the vast mass became vast ocean.

Onward and on, the eternal Pan,

Who layeth the world's incessant plan,

Halteth never in one shape,

But forever doth escape,

Like wave or flame, into new forms

Of gems, and air, of plants, and worms.

As the bee through the garden ranges,
From world to world the godhead changes;
As sheep go feeding in the waste,
From form to form He maketh haste;
This vault which glows immense with light
Is the inn where he lodges for a night.' " 1

Finally, Emerson considers the flux of na
ture as an indication of unfolding conscious
ness of life. "If we look at her work," he
writes of nature, "we seem to catch a glance

1 Complete Works, IX., 57-59.

NATURE 67

of a system in transition. Plants are the
young of the world, vessels of health and
vigor; but they grope ever upward towards
consciousness; the trees are imperfect men,
and seem to bemoan their imprisonment,
rooted in the ground. The animal is the
novice and probationer of a more advanced
order. The men, though young, having
tasted the first drop from the cup of thought,
are already dissipated: the maples and ferns
are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt when they
come to consciousness they too will curse and
swear." 1

In thus explaining the method of nature
Emerson was using a doctrine of Plotinus
which taught the conscious life of contem
plative activity in all things, even inanimate.
"If previous to a serious inquiry into nature,"
he writes, "we should jocosely, as it were,
affirm that all things desire contemplation,
and verge to this as their end, not only rational
animals but those destitute of reason, the na
ture of plants, and earth, the mother of them
all ; likewise that all things pursue contem
plation, as far as the natural capacity of each
permits, but that some things contemplate and
pursue contemplation differently from others,

1 Complete Works, III., 181-182.

68 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

some in reality and some by imitation behold
ing only the image; if we should affirm all
this, shall we not appear to advance a doc
trine entirely new?" 1

The method of nature in Emerson is thus
one that grows out of a belief in the spiritual
life of the universe. This life is set forth un
der the figure of a stream. So Heraclitus had
conceived it and had passed the idea down
through Plato to the Platonists. In Emerson
it is the characteristic image under which he
views the life of the universe. But he is care
ful to spiritualize the idea of a flux and to
identify it with the ceaseless energy of the
divine method in nature. Drawing upon the
tenets of Platonism he presents this energy
operating over and above things while seated
in its divine source, or as immanent in nature
as a rushing power of onward progress, or
finally, as an unfolding consciousness of life.
These are views of nature that identify her
with spirit and as will appear later, it is into
this that Emerson finally resolves the world of
outward things.

Universal antagonism is another idea under
which Emerson views the life or method of

1 Five Books of Plotinus, 199-200. Cf. Complete Works
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, L, 404.

NATURE 69

nature. At times he considers the world a
bifold fact made up of "metaphysical antag
onists" 1 and names the dualism Undulation
or Polarity.2 "Polarity, or action and reac
tion, we meet in every part of nature," he
explains; "in darkness and light; in heat and
cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male
and female; in the inspiration and expiration
of plants and animals ; in the equation of
quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal
body; in the systole and diastole of the heart;
in the undulations of fluids and of sound; in
the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in
electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity.
Superinduce magnetism at one end of a
needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at
the other end. If the south attracts, the north
repels. To empty here, you must condense
there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature,
so that each thing is a half, and suggests an
other thing to make it whole; as, spirit, mat
ter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, ob
jective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest;
yea, nay." 3

This is a development of the Pythagorean

1 Complete Works, I., 299.

2 Ibid., I., 98; II, 96.
Ubid., II., 96-97.

70 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

notion which forms one phase of Emerson's
Platonism. In De Gerando's Histoire Com-
paree des Systemes de Philosophic Emerson
found an account of the celebrated decade at
tributed to Alcmaeon, which gives a list of
couples constituting the universe. It groups
the elements of the world into:

"Le fini, Trepas, Finfini, aireipov,
L'impair, Treptrrov, le pair, aprtov,

L'un, ev, le multiple, ?rA^0os,

Le droit, Se£tov, le gauche, apiorepov,

Le male, appcv, le feminin, &?Av,

L'objet en repos, ^pe/xwi/, en mouveau,

Le direct, ev6v, le courbe,

La lumiere, fas, les tenebres,

Le bon, ayaOov, le mauvais,

Le carre, rtrpaywov, le quadrilatere irregulier,

In Emerson's series three of the original
list of Alcmaeon appear; darkness and light,
male and female; rest and motion. The ad
ditions are his own and could be indefinitely
extended, for the original scheme is arbitrary.
It forms, however, the basis of all Emerson's
thinking on this phase of nature. It is not as
profoundly treated as the foregoing statement

xi., 409-

NATURE 71

of nature's method; it is a theory that moves
on the surface of things and lacks deep insight
into the inward life of nature. As applied to
the world of morals it forms the ground of
Emerson's law of compensation; but even
when thus used, it yields to a higher idea
grounded in a truer conception of the soul's
life.

Thus far nature has been viewed in its
totality; but Emerson's philosophy attends to
each particle of the mass and finds it repre
sentative of the whole. He holds to "the fact
that the universe is represented in every one
of its particles. Everything in nature con
tains all the powers of nature. Everything is
made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist
sees one type under every metamorphosis, and
regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a
swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree
as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not
only the main character of the type, but part
for part all the details, all the aims, further
ances, hindrances, energies and whole system
of every other. Every occupation, trade, art,
transaction, is a compend of the world and a
correlation of every other. Each is an entire
emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its
trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And

72 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

each one must somehow accommodate the
whole man and recite all his destiny." *

This is the doctrine of the microcosm as
treated in the Platonists. In his Commen
taries on the Timceus of Plato Proclus writes:
aMan indeed is considered prior to all things,
either because the theory respecting him per
tains to us who make him the subject of dis
cussion, and are ourselves men ; or because
man is a microcosm, and all things subsist in
him partially, as the world contains divinely
and totally." 2 And in his On the Theology
of Plato he applies the idea to each particle
in the universe. "For if man is said to be a
microcosm, is it not necessary that each of the
elements by a much greater priority should
contain in itself appropriately all that the
world contains totally?" 3

Out of this conception arises Emerson's
teaching of the fundamental unity in nature.
"Herein is especially apprehended the unity
of Nature — the unity in variety — which meets
us everywhere. All the endless variety of
things make an identical impression. Xeno-
phanes complained in his old age, that, look

1 Complete Works, II., 101.

2 I, 4-

3 II., 193-

NATURE 73

where he would, all things hastened back to
Unity. He was weary of seeing the same
entity in the tedious variety of forms. The
fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf,
a drop, a crystal, a moment of time, is related
to the whole, and partakes of the perfection
of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm,
and faithfully renders the likeness of the
world." 1 The same idea he expresses in his
poem, Xenophanes.

In thus insisting on the unity of things
Emerson, as his reference shows, was using a
fragment of ancient Hellenic thought with
which he was familiar. He got his knowledge
of Xenophanes in De Gerando, who says:
"II [Xenophane] se plaignait que, dans les
derniers temps de sa vie, il ne pouvait se
feliciter de rien savoir avec certitude : 'quelque
part qu'il portat ses regards, tout se resolvait
pour lui dans 1'unite: il ne lui apparassait
partout qu 'une substance semblable a elle-
meme.' " 2

In the conception of the unity of all things,
so Emerson teaches, lies the possibility of re
storing nature to its original and eternal
beauty. As long as nature is studied in a nar-

1 Complete Works, I., 43.

2Histoire Comparee des Systemes de Philosophic, I., 460.

74 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

rowly scientific spirit which attends primarily
to naming of individual species, nature will
never reveal her true meaning to the mind of
man. Thus in his poem, Blight, he expresses
his weariness of a surface knowledge of things
and accuses the young scholars of a lack of
love and therefore of the mystic knowledge
of the flowers they pick. His mind refreshes
itself in the thought of the old students of na
ture.

"The old men studied magic in the flowers,

And human fortunes in astronomy,

And an omnipotence in chemistry,

Preferring things to names, for these were men,

Were Unitarians of the united world,

And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,

They caught the footsteps of the Same." l

That is, the old men held to a conception of
a unity of things which subsisted the same
throughout all diversity. But we, he adds,
are strangers to the stars, the beast, the bird,
the mine, and the plant because we use them
for selfish gain and do not ask their love.

"Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,

1 Complete Works, IX., 140.

NATURE 75

Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term." 1

To bring back original beauty to the world
thus blighted, the soul of man should cease
from its disunited life and live in a divine
unity. "The problem of restoring to the
world original and eternal beauty is solved by
the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the
blank that we see when we look at nature, is
in our own eye. The axis of vision is not co
incident with the axis of things, and so they
appear not transparent but opaque. The rea
son why the world lacks unity, and lies
broken and in heaps, is because man is dis
united with himself. He cannot be a natural
ist until he satisfies all the demands of the
spirit. Love is as much its demand as per
ception. Indeed, neither can be perfect with
out the other . . . When a faithful
thinker, resolute to detach every object from
personal relations and see it in the light of
thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science
with the fire of the holiest affections, then will
God go forth anew into the creation." 2

This enkindling of the intellect by love is
the distinguishing characteristic of the spirit

141.
Ibid., I, 73-74.

76 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

of inquiry in Plato. The true philosopher ac
cording to him is above all things a lover of
truth. And this conception is carried over
into the scheme of the Platonists, who make
the highest end of all human knowledge the
vision of the eternal unity of all things, the
One. Thus Proclus explains that the mania,
or the inspiration belonging to the lover, "re
ceiving the soul united, conjoins this one of
the soul to the gods, and to intelligible
beauty." l

That is, by living with a divine unity the
soul realizes the highest possible experience.
And this according to Emerson would mean
the re-creation of the world. Hence in the
closing section of Nature, "Prospects," he
turns to the need of re-creating the world as
the prospect that lies before each one after he
has come to understand the meaning of nature
and its relation to the mind of man. But at
this point Emerson's thought passes over to a
consideration of his second great theme, soul :
and hence the final solution of the meaning of
nature cannot be arrived at until this theme
has been carefully explained.

1 Quoted by lamblichus, On the Mysteries, 356.

CHAPTER III

SOUL

THROUGHOUT his treatment of nature
Emerson relates his subject to soul.
His themes of symbolism and correlation of
mind and matter recognized the dependence
of nature upon spirit or mind. His concep
tion of the method of nature leads him to
maintain the divine character of the energy
which nature reveals in ceaseless operation in
her realm. And his hope of the restoration
of nature to her primary and eternal beauty is
based upon his belief in the purification of
the soul as the means to effect the change.

It was natural, then, as he was at work on
his first book, Nature, that he should have
contemplated the writing of another essay
which he was to entitle Spirit. His plan as
later developed did not, however, assign this
new idea to a second essay but found a place
for it in the original work. The seventh
chapter of Nature is thus entitled "Spirit," the
theme of which is indicated in its opening

77

78 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

paragraph: "And all the uses of nature ad
mit of being summed in one, which yields the
activity of man an infinite scope. Through
all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts
of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it
had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit." 1
In Emerson's conception of spirit, then, is to
be found his final teaching on the meaning of
existence; in revealing the nature of soul all
his deepest thinking ends.

His favorite authors were rich in schemes of
speculation on this subject. Plato had placed
the metaphysics of the soul on a commanding
eminence in his Phcedo, Phcedrus, Republic
and Timceus. Plotinus had left a group of
Enneads that carried the speculations of Plato
into the high realm of rational mysticism in
which the soul of man is in actual contact with
the soul of the highest principle of all things,
the One; and in his theories of a universal In
tellect and a Soul of the Universe he had given
the form for all the speculation of the Plato-
nists on the nature of soul. The attention
which Emerson gave to such speculation even
in its most mystical flights testifies to the close
ness and the sympathy with which he read
his Platonic sources.

1 Complete Works, I., 61.

SOUL 79

Soul in Emerson is an all-embracing term.
It means God. It is also conceived as an in
tellectual energy, or pure intellect. And at
times Emerson conceives it as the very life of
the universe under the form of a world soul.
Roughly speaking, his division corresponds to
the three principles of the Platonists which
are often spoken of as the Platonic trinity —
the One, Universal Intellect, and Universal
Soul. These three are conceived as the ab
solute hypostases of things and are all found
in the soul of man. Emerson thus was able
to dignify his conception of the human soul by
relating it to these great principles. Of
psychology in the scientific acceptance of the
term in present-day philosophy Emerson has
practically nothing to say; but of Soul as a
divine presence in man and the universe he
has left much in his most characteristic
work.

Owing to his teachings on this subject he has
come to be regarded as a seer and out of his
central conception arises the great power
which his writings generate in the lives of his
readers. In order to show the importance of
Platonism in his doctrine of the soul, then, it
will be best to follow the threefold division
of his idea: Soul as God, or the Over-Soul;

8o THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Soul as Intellect; and Soul in the universe, or
the World-Soul.

I.

THE OVER-SOUL.

The ground of all his teaching on soul is to
be found in his doctrine of a Universal Mind,
which is the sovereign agent common in its
entirety to all men. "There is one mind," so
his statement runs, "common to all individual
men. Every man is an inlet to the same and
to all of the same. He that is once admitted
to the right of reason is made a freeman of the
whole estate. What Plato has thought, he
may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel;
what at any time has befallen any man, he can
understand. Who hath access to this univer
sal mind is a part to all that is or can be done,
for this is the only and sovereign agent." 1

In Cudworth is found a conception quite
similar to this of Emerson's. To confute the
theories of atheism Cudworth lays down the
principle "that there can be but one only orig
inal mind, or no more than one understanding
Being self-existent; all other minds whatso
ever partaking of one original mind; and be-

1 Complete Works, II., 3.

THE OVER-SOUL 81

ing, as it were, stamped with the impression
or signature of one and the same seal. From
whence it cometh to pass, that all minds, in
the several places and ages of the world, have
ideas or notions of things exactly alike, and
truths indivisibly the same. Truths are not
multiplied by the diversity of minds that ap
prehend them ; because they are all but ectypal
participations of one and the same original or
archetypal mind and truth. As the same face
may be reflected in several glasses; and the
image of the same sun may be in a thousand
eyes at once beholding it; and one and the
same voice may be in a thousand ears listening
to it; so when innumerable created minds have
the same ideas of things, and understand the
same truths, it is but one and the same eternal
light that is reflected in them all ("that light,
which enlighteneth every man that cometh
into the world"), or the same voice of that one
everlasting Word, that is never silent, re
echoed by them." *

The conception of a universal mind goes
back to the Neo-Platonic doctrine of one su
preme intellect. In this mind all particular
minds are contained, each expressing the
whole in its own way. This supreme intellect

1 The True Intellectual Systems of the Universe, III., 71.

82 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

is one of the absolute principles. An account
of the manner in which all minds exist in this
one great mind is found in Plotinus. "They
likewise see all things, not those with which
generation, but those with which essence is
present. And they perceive themselves in
others. For all things there are diaphanous;
and nothing is dark and resisting, but every
thing is apparent to every one internally and
throughout. For light everywhere meets
with light; since everything contains all things
in itself, and again sees all things in another.
So that all things are everywhere, and all is
all. Each thing likewise is everything." 1

Emerson's account compared with Cud-
worth's and Plotinus' shows a characteristic
manner of approach. Cudworth and Plotinus
are concerned with the nature and existence
of the supreme mind considered in and for it
self, while Emerson views the question from
the standpoint of the individual man who
shares in this supreme mind as an inherited
right. He thus emphasizes the individual's
claim to such a mind.

But Emerson elaborates the idea in an even
more characteristic fashion. In the state
ment of the doctrine as thus far made, the

1 Select Works, Introduction, p. Ixxx., note.

THE OVER-SOUL 83

universal mind is described as merely present
to each individual ; no more specific account
of the relation between the two is given. But
in the name Over-Soul, which Emerson ap
plies to the universal mind, there is a clear in
dication of a change in the relation between
it and the individual; the universal soul pre
sides over the former, gives it its life and
directs its energies.

This advance in the idea recognizes the
teaching of the Platonists concerning the in
ter-relation of their three great principles of
all things. These principles are arranged in
a causal series. At the head is the One, out
of which proceeds logically Universal Mind
or Intellect; and this latter in turn gives rise
to Universal Soul. Each of the two princi
ples below the One finds above it a greater
principle out of which it comes and toward
which its energies are directed. Proclus
speaking of the relation of the third princi
ple to the second says that "she [soul] sees
above all souls, intellectual essences and or
ders. For above every soul a deiform intel
lect resides, which imparts to the soul an in
tellectual habit. She also sees prior to these,
the monads of the gods themselves which are
above intellect, and from which the intellec-

84 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tual multitudes receive their unions. For it is
necessary that unific causes should be placed
above things united, in the same manner as
vivifying causes are above things vivified,
causes that impart intellect are above things
intellectualized, and in a similar manner un-
participable hypostases are above all partici
pants." x

Plotinus, in like manner, describes the
relation of soul to the world. "For it [soul]
governs, abiding on high. And the world is
animated after such a manner, that it cannot
with so much propriety be said to have a soul
of its own, as to have a soul presiding over
it; being subdued by, and not subduing it,
and being possessed, and not possessing. For
it lies in soul which sustains it, and no part of
it is destitute of soul ; being moistened with
life, like a net in water." 2

In such statements as these is to be found
the suggestion of that theory of the Over-Soul
which Emerson expounds in the following
passage: "The Supreme Critic on the errors
of the past and the present, and the only
prophet of that which must be, is that great

1 Proclus, On Providence and Fate, in On the Theology of
Plato, II., 455-456.

2 Select Works, 343.

THE OVER-SOUL 85

nature in which we rest as the earth lies in
the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity,
that Over-Soul, within which every man's
particular being is contained and made one
with all other; that common heart of which
all sincere conversation is the worship, to
which all right action is submission ; that over
powering reality which confutes our tricks
and talents, and constrains every one to pass
for what he is, and to speak from his character
and not from his tongue, and which evermore
tends to pass into our thought and hand and
become wisdom and virtue and power and
beauty. We live in succession, in division, in
parts, in particles. Meantime within man is
the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the
universal beauty, to which every part and
particle is equally related; the eternal One." J
In this passage there is an accumulation of
detail which shows how Emerson uses the
various doctrines of Platonism to do honor to
his great idea, the Over-Soul. He identifies
it with "that Unity" and with "the eternal
One," both of which expressions refer to the
first of the absolute principles of the Platon-
ists, the One. In stating that in the Over-
Soul every man's particular being is contained

1 Complete Works, II., 26^-269.

86 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and made one with all other, he makes refer
ence to the conception of the supreme intellect,
in which, according to Plotinus, all minds
subsist together. "And they perceive them
selves in others," Plotinus writes. "For all
things there are diaphanous; and nothing is
dark and resisting, but everything is apparent
to everyone internally and throughout. For
light everywhere meets with light; since
everything contains all things in itself, and
again sees all things in another. So that all
things are everywhere, and all is all. Each
thing likewise is everything." 1

When he says that though we live in di
vision, there is within us the soul of the whole,
his words recall what Plotinus had written
of the soul: "For it does not give life to
individuals, through a division of itself into
minute parts, but it vivifies all things with the
whole of itself; and the whole of it is present
everywhere, in a manner similar to its gen
erator, both according to oneness and ubiq
uity." 2 In identifying the Over-Soul with
the universal beauty, Emerson is referring
to the absolute beauty which stands at the end
of the dialectic quest in Plato's Banquet and

1 Select Works, Introduction, p. Ixxx., note.

2 Ibid., 258.

THE OVER-SOUL 87

which Plotinus at times acknowledges to be
the first principle of things, the beautiful
itself.1

Furthermore, in designating the Over-
Soul "the wise silence," Emerson was but
summing up what Plotinus teaches concern
ing the One and its knowledge of itself. "In
the next place," adds Plotinus, "that which is
entirely simple will not be in want of a busy
energy, as it were, about itself. For what will
it learn by intellectual perception? For
prior to this perception, it exists that which
it is to itself. For again, knowledge is a cer
tain desire and, as it were, an investigating
discovery. Hence, that which is without any
difference in itself with respect to itself, is
quiescent, and investigates nothing respecting
itself." 2 It is so truly one that it does not
even think itself and yet is not ignorant.

Finally, in stating that this Over-Soul is
within us, Emerson agrees with Plotinus in
his explanation that "as in the nature of things
there are these three hypostases, so, likewise,
it is proper to think, that the above mentioned
three subsist with us." 3 Emerson's exposi-

1 An Essay on the Beautiful, 32.

2 Select Works, 432.
9 Ibid., 279.

88 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tion, then, of the Over-Soul is a highly concen
trated series of Platonic conceptions, whose
central life is to be found in the theorizing of
Plotinus concerning the One. No better
illustration of the way in which Emerson uses
the shreds and patches of Platonic theory to
express himself could be found.

In Emerson's most characteristic teaching,
then, soul is conceived in a way that lifts
it above the common view of its nature as the
mere thinking and vital part of man. It is
not a faculty. It is rather the Divine Pres
ence itself in man striving to burn away all
that is personal, so that He alone can give life
to the individual soul. In this Divine Soul
man participates; it is a larger thing than any
one soul, so to speak, for it is the Over-Soul.
Thus Emerson in his essay, The Over-Soul, at
the outset of his explanation carefully defines
his idea: "All goes to show that the soul in
man is not an organ, but animates and exer
cises all the organs ; is not a function, like the
power of memory, of calculation, of compari
son, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a
faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the
will, but the master of the intellect or the will ;
is the background of our being, in which they
lie — an immensity not possessed and cannot

V

THE OVER-SOUL 89

be possessed. From within or from behind,
a light shines through us upon things and
makes us aware that we are nothing, but the
light is alJU'LA.

Such psychology is in keeping with the con
ception of Plotinus. From Plato, Plotinus
inherited the manner of conceiving spiritual
notions under the figure of light. The part
that the figure plays in his explanation of the
mystical experiences of the soul is an impor
tant one. Thus he speaks of the mystical
trance when the soul enjoys the presence of
the One : "Then also it is requisite to believe
that we have seen it, when the soul receives a
sudden light. For this light is from him,
and is him. And then it is proper to think
that he is present, when like another God
entering into the house of some one who in
vokes him, he fills it with splendour. For
unless he entered, he would not illuminate it.
And thus the soul would be without light, and
without the possession of this God. But when
illuminated, it has that which it sought for.
This likeness is the true end to the soul, to
come into contact with his light, and to behold
him through it; not by the light of another
thing; but to perceive that very thing itself

1 Complete Works, II., 270.

90 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

through which it sees. For that through
which it is illuminated, is the very thing which
it is necessary to behold." 1

Emerson's account shows a direct connec
tion with one of the Cambridge Platonists,
John Smith, an extract from whose work ap
pears in a note to a passage in Coleridge's
Aids to Reflection. To point the difference
between reason and understanding Coleridge
quotes from Smith's Posthumous Tracts
( 1660) : " 'While we reflect on our own idea
of Reason, we know that our souls are not it,
but only partake of it; and that we have it
Kara pAOgw and not K°-T oixnrjv. Neither can it
be called a faculty, but far rather a light,
which we enjoy, but the source of which is
not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual
to be denominated mine! " 2 It is a concep
tion of soul quite in keeping with Plotinus'
conception and so tersely stated as to attract
Emerson.

Holding to such a conception of soul,
Plotinus finds the highest experience possible
for man in a mystical state. Plato had never
developed the mystical side of his doctrine as

1 Select Works, 452-453.

2 The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I.,
264, n.

THE OVER-SOUL 91

it lay inherent in his conception of an abso
lute idea of the good which is above all being.
Now the all-absorbing work of Plotinus was
to formulate a scheme of mysticism on the
basis of Plato. In so doing he brought to a
logical culmination the preceding develop
ment of all Hellenic thought so that his work
stands to-day as the flower of that philosophi
cal life which started with Thales and Anaxi-
mander. His system is thus one of rational
mysticism, which aims to show how the log
ical outcome of speculation on knowledge
ends in an experience which transcends knowl
edge itself.

Such a scheme appealed to Emerson ; it was
as the water of life to his soul. His demand
was for a philosophy of insight. He was dis
satisfied with the ways of systematic philoso
phy; what he wanted above all things was a
fresh contact with spiritual realities. "The
foregoing generations beheld God and nature
face to face; we, through their eyes. Why
should not we also enjoy an original relation
to the universe? Why should not we have a
poetry and philosophy of insight and not of
tradition, and a religion by revelation to us,
and not the history of theirs?" 1 The mystical

1 Complete Works, L, 3.

92 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

teaching of Plotinus satisfied these needs, as
will appear when Emerson's work is reviewed
in connection with the Enneads of Plotinus
and other writings of members of his school.

Both Emerson and Plotinus agree in defin
ing the mystic state as a union of the soul with
God. "Ineffable is the union of man and
God," writes Emerson, "in every act of the
soul. The simplest person who in his integ
rity worships God, becomes God." 1 In his
account of the experience Plotinus says of the
soul: "Becoming wholly absorbed in deity,
she is one, conjoining as it were centre with
centre. For here concurring they are one;
but they are then two when they are separate.
. . . Since, therefore [in this conjunction
with deity], there were not two things, but
the perceiver was one with the thing per
ceived, as not being [properly speaking]
vision, but union ; whoever becomes one by
mingling with deity, and afterwards recol
lects this union, will have with himself an
image of it." 2

Both describe the experience as a vision in
which the two participants are one. Writing
of the eternal One present in the soul of man,

1 Ibid., II., 292.

2 Select Works, 502-503.

THE OVER-SOUL 93

Emerson states as the peculiarity of the ex
perience that "the act of seeing and the thing
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject
and the object are one." * A like characteris
tic is put forward by Plotinus. "Perhaps,
however, neither must it be said that he sees,
but that he is the thing seen ; if it is necessary
to call these two things, i. e., the perceiver
and the thing perceived. But both are one;
though it is bold to assert this." 2

Examined from another point of view, the
relation is not thus boldly stated, but is
changed to one in which the soul of the indi
vidual is enveloped by an all-embracing pres
ence. In lamblichus the contact with divinity
is thus given: "We are comprehended in it,
or rather we are filled by it, and we possess
that very thing which we are [or by which
our essence is characterized], in knowing the
gods." 3 In recounting his experience when
the soul opens to a vision of the unity of things
Emerson says of the beatitude: "It is not in
us so much as we are in it." 4 He repeats the
idea in the same account.5 Speaking of mo-

1 Complete Works, II., 269.

2 Select Works, 502.

3 On the Mysteries, 24.

4 Complete Works, VI., 25.

5 Ibid., VI., 26.

94 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ments of inspiration, Emerson uses the same
form of statement — "We might say of these
memorable moments of life that we were in
them, not they in us." 1 It is a common ex
pression with him.

In one of the Chaldean oracles the idea of
envelopment is conveyed in a slightly varied
form which Emerson also uses. Speaking of
human souls, the oracle explains: "But they
lie in God, drawing vigorous torches [i. e.,
unities, images of the one~\, descending from
the father; and from these descending, the
soul plucks of empyrean fruits, the soul-
nourishing flower." 2 In language less tech
nical and figurative Emerson conveys the
thought underlying this oracle in his words —
"We lie in the lap of immense intelligence,
which makes us receivers of its truth and
organs of its activity." 3

Emerson even imitates perhaps the most
impressive account which Plotinus has left of
the experience. In one of his descriptions
Plotinus closes with the conclusion — "This,
therefore, is the life of the Gods, and of divine
and happy men, a liberation from all terrene

1 Complete Works, VIII., 279.

2 Select Works, 343, note i.

3 Complete Works, II., 64.

THE OVER-SOUL 95

concerns, a life unaccompanied with human
pleasures, and a flight of the alone to the
alone." 1 Such an experience Emerson calls
"a beatitude, but without any sign of joy;
earnest, solitary, even sad." 2 And quoting
Plotinus, he names it "the flight of the alone
to the alone."* Consequently, in his Over-
Soul he emphasizes the necessity of loneliness,
of the putting away of all human mediation
as the condition of the experience. "The soul
gives itself, alone, original and pure, to the
Lonely, Original and Pure, who, on that con
dition, gladly inhabits, leads and speaks
through it." 4

The loneliness and sadness of the flight im
pressed him as is seen in his more elaborate
attempt to bring out the unique character of
the experience. "And now at last," he writes,
"the highest truth on this subject remains un
said; probably cannot be said; for all that we
say is the far-off remembering of the intuition.
That thought by what I can now nearest ap
proach to say it, is this. When good is near
you, when you have life in yourself, it is not
by any known or accustomed way; you shall

1 Select Works, 506.

2 Complete Works, IV., 97.

3 Ibid.
*Ibid., II., 296.

96 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

not discern the footprints of any other; you
shall not see the face of man; you shall not
hear any name; — the way, the thought, the
good, shall be wholly strange and new. It
shall exclude example and experience. You
take the way from man, not to man. All per
sons that ever existed are its forgotten minis
ters. Fear and hope are alike beneath it.
There is somewhat low even in hope. In the
hour of vision there is nothing that can be
called gratitude, nor properly joy." 1

The note of loneliness in Plotinus' descrip
tion of the mystic trance caught Emerson's ear
and awakened a response within him. He
loved solitude for the spiritual strengthening
he found in it; and throughout his work he
lays emphasis upon the need of it in life. "Ah
me!" he complains, "no man goeth alone."2
"Let me admonish you," he says to the Cam
bridge divinity students, "first of all, to go
alone." 3 To gain self-reliance he says, "We
must go alone."4 "Think alone," he holds,
"and all places are friendly and sacred." 5 Of
the poets who live as hermits in cities he

1 Complete Works, II., 68-69.

2 Ibid., I, 144.

3 Ibid., I., 145.

* Ibid., II., 71.

* Ibid., I., 174.

THE OVER-SOUL 97

writes : "They are alone with the mind." l
In all these sentences is heard the echoing of
that phrase of Plotinus which names the mys
tic experience "a flight of the alone to the
alone."

In teaching receptivity as the attitude of
the soul in this experience Emerson identifies
himself with Plotinus. The latter held athat
the nature of soul is everywhere tractable; and
that it may be received the most easily of all
things, if any thing is fashioned so as to be
passive to it, and is able to receive a certain
portion of it." 2 The same idea is given in
Emerson's words : "When I watch that flow
ing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours
for a season its streams into me, I see that I am
a pensioner; not a cause but a surprised spec
tator of this ethereal water; that I desire and
look up and put myself in the attitude of re
ception, but from some alien energy the vis
ions come." 3

Before such a mystic experience is possible
there must be a putting off of all that is for
eign so as to present the soul in pure naked
ness. Thus Plotinus speaking of such abla-

*Ibid., I., 175-

* Select Works, 347.

3 Complete Works, II., 268.

98 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tion remarks: "But as it is said of matter,
that it ought to be void of all qualities, in or
der that it may receive the impressions of all
things; thus also, and in a much greater de
gree, it is necessary that the soul should be
come formless, in order that there may be no
impediment to its being filled and illuminated
by the first principles of things." 1 "And
how, therefore," he asks, "can this be accom
plished? By an ablation of all things." 2 In
such teaching we find the parallel to Emer
son's reiterations of the necessity of humility
as a condition of the mystic experience; as
when he assures us : "This energy does not
descend into individual life on any other con
dition than entire possession. It comes to the
lowly and simple; it comes to whomsoever
will put off what is foreign and proud." 3

A second condition of enjoying the great
experience is that the soul should be in a state
of absolute oneness. As Plotinus puts it,
"the soul, likewise, should for this purpose be
liberated from all vice, in consequence of has
tening to the [vision of the] good; and should
ascend to the principle which is in herself, and

1 Select Works, 491.

2 Ibid., 454.

8 Complete Works, II., 289.

THE OVER-SOUL 99

become one instead of many things, in order
that she may survey the principle of all things,
and the one/' l Or, as Emerson says of one
who reverences the soul, "he will weave no
longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but
he will live with a divine unity." 2 In this
unified life, as has already been seen, Emerson
finds the way to restore the world to its orig
inal beauty.

The feeling experienced by the soul in this
union with the divine One is a nimble glad
ness. According to Plotinus when the soul
sees God, "she will perceive herself to be a
pure light, unburthened, agile." 3 "She is
affected in the most felicitous manner." 4 Or
as Emerson describes the feeling of the soul,
"then is it glad, young and nimble." 5

The element of youthfulness in Emerson's
statement was imported into the experience
from a source other than Plotinus: it is a sug
gestion from Proclus. In his own copy of
Proclus On the Theology of Plato Emerson
had indexed under "Youth" a passage from
which the following is an extract: "For he

1 Select Works, 476.

2 Complete Works, II., 297.

3 Select Works, 500.
* Ibid., 499.

5 Complete Works, II., 296.

ioo THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

[Plato] says that souls in the Saturnian period
abandon old age, but return to youth, and re
move from themselves hoariness but have
black hair; but the cheeks of those that have
beards being rendered smooth, they are re
stored to the past season (of youth)."1 In
like vein Emerson writes : "We grizzle every
day. I see no need of it. Whilst we con
verse with what is above us, we do not grow
old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, recep
tive, aspiring, with religious eye looking up
ward, counts itself nothing and abandons it
self to the instruction flowing from all sides.
But the man and woman of seventy assume to
know all, they have outlived their hope, they
renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the
necessary and talk down to the young. Let
them then become organs of the Holy Ghost;
let them be lovers ; let them behold truth ; and
their ever are uplifted, their wrinkles
smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope
and power." 2

In spite of the attempt to describe the state,
its ineffableness remains its chief feature.
After his account of the union, Plotinus adds:
"This spectacle is a thing difficult to explain

1 1, 333-

2 Complete Works, II., 319.

THE OVER-SOUL 101

by words. For how can any one narrate that
as something different from himself, which,
when he sees he does not behold as different,
but as one with himself? This, therefore, is
manifested by the mandate of the mysteries,
which orders that they shall not be divulged
to those who are uninitiated. For as that
which is divine cannot be unfolded to the mul
titude, this mandate forbids the attempt to
elucidate it to any one but him who is for
tunately able to perceive it." * Similar to
this are the utterances of Emerson: "I can
not — nor can any man — speak precisely of
things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit
of man, his strength, his grace, his tendency,
his art, is the grace and the presence of God.
It is beyond explanation." 2 "Ineffable is the
union of man and God in every act of the soul.
The simplest person who in his integrity wor
ships God, becomes God; yet for ever and
ever the influx of this better and universal
self is new and unsearchable." 3

The absolute principle with which the soul
aims to identify itself is also ineffable.
"There is a principle \vhich is the basis of

1 Select Works, 502-503.

2 Complete Works, L, 194.

3 Ibid.. II., 292.

102 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

things," observes Emerson, "which all speech
aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple,
quiet, imdescribed, undescribable presence,
dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful
lord." l Plotinus names the One "the most
simple of things." "Being alone and soli
tary," he adds, "it is perfectly quiescent." 2
He further observes: "Hence, it is in reality
ineffable. For of whatever you speak, you
speak of a certain thing. But of that which
is beyond all things, and which is beyond even
most venerable intellect, it is alone true to
assert that it has not any other name [than the
ineffable], and that it is not some one of all
things. Properly speaking, however, there is
no name of it, because nothing can be asserted
of it. We, however, endeavour as much as
possible to signify to ourselves something re
specting it." 3

Entrance into this high communion is not
by knowledge or any reasoning process, but
by an actual presence of the great principle in
the soul of man. "In this affair," writes
Plotinus, "a doubt especially arises, because
the perception of the highest God is not ef-

* Ibid., VI., 213.
2 Select Works, 441, 429.
., 439-

THE OVER-SOUL 103

fected by science, nor by intelligence, like
other intelligibles, but by the presence of him,
which is a mode of knowledge superior to that
of science. But the soul suffers an apostacy
from the one, and is not entirely one when it
receives scientific knowledge. For science is
reason, and reason is multitudinous. The
soul, therefore, in this case, deviates from the
one, and falls into number and multitude." l
In keeping with such an idea Emerson
writes: "If we ask whence this comes, if we
seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philos
ophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is
all we can affirm." 2 Man attempting to give
an account of himself must be content to re
cite "the fact that there is a Life not to be
described or known otherwise than by posses
sion. What account can he give of his essence
more than so it was to be? The royal reason,
the Grace of God, seems the only description
of our multiform, but ever identical fact.
There is virtue, there is genius, there is success,
or there is not. There is the incoming or the
receding of God : that is all we can affirm ; and
we can show neither how nor why." 3

1 Select Works, 479.

2 Complete Works, II., 65.
8 Ibid., I., 204.

104 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Such parallelisms of thought and at times
of language strengthen the belief in the indebt
edness of Emerson to Plotinus' account of
philosophic mysticism. But such indebted
ness does not preclude the genuineness of Em
erson's own experience. His mind was in
constant tension in the endeavor to describe its
own feelings; and to no experience does he
more often refer than to the divine moments
of intuition. The range of the intuition is
a wide one; it embraces at its highest ecstasy,
trance, and prophetic inspiration, and at its
lowest "the faintest glow of virtuous emo
tion." 1 In recording this milder form of
the experience Emerson was but describing
his own psychological states, but into his ac
count he imports many facts which Plotinus
had recorded. And in a degree, impossible
now to indicate, Emerson made them facts of
his own experience. It was his way to live
out his teachings before he proclaimed them.
Still the record reveals the traces of his read
ing and study.

A good instance of this blend of alien
thought with his own experience is to be found
in a personal feeling which he enjoyed in the
presence of certain aspects of nature. "Starid-

1 Complete Works, II., 281.

THE OVER-SOUL 105

ing on the bare ground," he tells us, "my head
bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into in
finite space — all mean egotism vanishes. I
become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing;
I see all ; the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me; I am part or parcel of
God. The name of the nearest friend sounds
then foreign and accidental: to be brothers,
to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then
a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
uncontained and immortal beauty." 1

In this passage there are characteristic
recollections of Platonic and Plotinic concep
tions. The most startling expression — "I be
come a transparent eyeball" — is a rendering
of a sentiment Emerson had noted in Plotinus,
who, in order to describe the manner of
knowledge in the intelligible world, writes :
"There, however, everybody is pure, and each
inhabitant is, as it were, an eye. Nothing
likewise is there concealed, or fictitious, but
before one can speak to another, the latter
knows what the former intended to say." 2
The identification of himself in part with God
is in keeping with what has already been said
of the complete union of the soul with the

1 Complete Works, I., 10.

2 Select Works, 365.

io6 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

One. The fact that he is "the lover of uncon-
tained and immortal beauty" recalls Plato's
description of the idea of beauty as given in
the Banquet: "It exists forever, being neither
produced nor destroyed, and neither suffering
increase nor decay . . . nor does it exist
in any other being, such as an animal ; nor in
the earth, nor in the heavens, nor in any other
part of the universe ; but it subsists by and with
itself, and possesses a form eternally one." 1

A more vital use of the doctrines of Platon-
ism is found in Emerson's application of them
to the realm of conduct. Among the ethical
ideals which he sets forth self-reliance is cen
tral. It is central because it is a deduction
from the reality of the mystical experience in
the soul. The essence of that state lies in the
identification of the soul with the Divine; the
soul shares the power of the Divine; it is
strong with the same strength. And the chief
characteristic of the divine One, according to
Plotinus, is its self-sufficiency; it is in need of
nothing, but exists alone in itself. "That
which is perfectly simple," says Plotinus of
the One, "and truly self-sufficient, is not in
want of any thing." 2 "For it does not seek

1 Bohn translation, III., 552-553-

2 Select Works, 440.

THE OVER-SOUL 107

after any thing in order that it may be, nor in
order that it may be in an excellent condition,
nor that it may be there established. For be
ing the cause of existence to other things, and
not deriving that which it is from others, nor
its happiness, what addition can be made to
it external to itself? Hence its happiness, or
the excellency of its condition, is not acci
dental to it. For it is itself [all that is suffi
cient to itself]. There is not likewise any
place for it. For it is not in want of a foun
dation, as if it were not able to sustain itself.
. . . But other things are established on
account of the one, through which also they
at the same time subsist, and have the place
in which they are arranged. . * . Every
thing which is said to be indigent, is indigent
of a good condition, and of that which pre
serves it. Hence to the one nothing is good,
and, therefore, neither is the wish for anything
good to it. But it is super-good. And it is
not good to itself, but to other things, which
are able to participate of it." 1

Adhering to such teachings, Emerson came
to ground his doctrine of self-reliance on the
reality of the mystic experience in which the
One imparts its nature to all things which are

1 Select Works, 487-489.

io8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

resolved into it. Thus he writes in his essay,
Self-Reliance : "This is the ultimate fact
which we so quickly reach on this, as on every
topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed
One. Self-existence is the attribute of the
Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure
of good by the degree in which it enters into
all lower forms. All things real are so by so
much virtue as they contain. Commerce,
husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence,
personal weight, are somewhat, and engage
my respect as examples of its presence and im
pure action. I see the same law working in
nature for conservation and growth. Power
is, in nature, the essential measure of right.
Nature suffers nothing to remain in her king
doms which cannot help itself. The genesis
and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit,
the bended tree recovering itself from the
strong wind, the vital resources of every ani
mal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the
self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul." *
In this same experience Emerson also finds
a corrective of the doctrine of indifferency.
Into this state of mind he is led by a too literal
application to the realm of conduct of the
Pythagorean notion of antagonism. Such a

1 Complete Works, II., 70-71.

THE OVER-SOUL 109

theory taught that the harmony of the universe
resulted from the mutual opposition of antago
nistic forces. Blending the notion with the
idea of a microcosm, Emerson came to hold
that "the true doctrine of omnipresence is that
God reappears with all his parts in every
moss and cobweb. The value of the universe
contrives to throw itself into every point. If
the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity,
so the repulsion; if the force, so the limita
tion." 1 The logical outcome of such teach
ing he sees to be indifferency. "Thus do all
things preach the indifferency of circum
stances. The man is all. Everything has two
sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage
has its tax. I learn to be content. But the
doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine
of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hear
ing these representations — What boots it to do
well? there is one event to good and evil; if
I gain any good I must pay for it; if I lose
any good I gain some other; all actions are
indifferent." 2

But Emerson cannot rest thus on the surface
of things; he looks beyond the world of cir
cumstantial good and evil to the inward world

1 Complete Works, II., 101-102.

2 Ibid., II., 120.

i io THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

of the soul and there finds the solution of the
question in the presence of the Divine which
gives the soul its life. "There is a deeper fact
in the soul," he writes, "than compensation, to-
wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com
pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all
this running sea of circumstance, whose waters
ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the
aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, or
God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole.
Being is the vast affirmative, excluding nega
tion, self-balanced, and swallowing up all
relations, parts and times within itself. Na
ture, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence.
Vice is the absence or departure of the same." *
This transference of the question from an
outward world to an inward one recognizes
the truth which Plotinus teaches concerning
eternity. Eternity is identified with true be
ing and "is the same with deity." 2 "Indeed,
he who surveys an abundant power collected
into one," adds Plotinus, "according to this
particular thing which is as it were a subject,
he denominates it essence; afterwards, so far
as he beholds life in it, he denominates it mo
tion; and in the next place, he calls it perma-

1 Ibid., II., 120-121.

2 Select Works, 188.

THE OVER-SOUL in

nency, so far as it entirely possesses an
invariable sameness of subsistence. And he
denominates it different and the same, so far
as all these are at once one. Thus, therefore,
composing these, so as to be at once one life
alone, contracting in them difference, and be
holding an unceasing sameness of energy, and
which never passes from one intelligence or
life to another, but always possesses the invari
able, and is without interval; beholding all
these, he will behold eternity. For he will
perceive life abiding in sameness, and always
possessing everything present, and not at one
time this, and afterwards another thing, but
| containing all things at once, and not now
some things, and again others. For it is an
impartible end; just as in a point where all
things subsist at once, and have not yet pro
ceeded into a [linear] flux. It likewise
abides in the same, i. e., in itself, and does not
suffer any change. But it is always in the
present, because nothing of it is past, nor
again will be in future, but this very thing
which it is, it always is." *

Opposed to this conception of being Emer
son places vice, which he identifies with non-
being. "Vice is the absence or departure of

*Ibid.f 181-182.

U2 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the same [that is, of being]. Nothing, False
hood, may indeed stand as the great Night or
shade on which as a background the living
universe paints itself forth, but no fact is be
gotten by it; it cannot work for it is not. It
cannot work any good; it cannot work any
harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not
to be than to be." 1

Such a conception reflects the views of the
Platonists on matter, which is the farthest re
moved from true being. "Since matter is
neither soul nor intellect," says Plotinus, "nor
life, nor form, nor reason, nor bound; for it
is infinite; nor power; for what can it effect;
but falls off from all these, neither can it
rightly receive the appellation of being. But
it may deservedly be called non-being. . . .
It likewise seems to be full and to be all things,
and yet has nothing. But the things which
enter into and depart from matter, are imita
tions and images of [real] beings, flowing
about a formless resemblance; and on account
of its formless nature are seen within it.
They also appear, indeed, to effect something
in it, but effect nothing; for they are vain and
debile, and have no resisting power. And
since matter, likewise, is void of resistance,

1 Complete Works, II., 121.

THE OVER-SOUL 113

they pervade without dividing it, like images
in water, or as if some one should send as it
were forms into what is called a vacuum.1
. . . So that if someone should say that
matter is evil, he will assert what is true, if he
says it is impassive to the good, which is the
same thing as to say, that it is entirely impas
sive." 2

It is in these conceptions of the nature of
being and non-being, then, that Emerson finds
the solution of the question of compensation.
The law is not one of indifferency based on the
theory that "there is one event to good and
evil; if I gain any good I must pay for it; if
I lose any good I gain some other"; the law
works in the spiritual world in a positive way.
If the criminal adheres to his vice and con
tumacy, "inasmuch as he carries the malignity
and the lie with him he so far deceases from
nature." 3 "Neither can it be said," Emerson
adds, "that the gain of rectitude must be
bought by any loss. There is no penalty to
virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper
additions of being. In a virtuous action I
properly am; in a virtuous act I add to the

1 Select Works, 142-144.

2 Ibid., 153-

3 Complete Works, II., 121.

114 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

world; I plant into deserts conquered from
Chaos and Nothing and see darkness receding
on the limits of the horizon." l "There is no
tax on the good of virtue, for that is the in
coming of God himself, or absolute existence,
without any comparative." 2

In such a manner does Emerson use the
tenets of Platonism to explain the working of
the great law of compensation which had held
his attention from early boyhood. He begins
his reasoning on the low level of outward cir
cumstances which he is led to interpret from
the standpoint of two theories embodied in
the composite Platonism which he holds — the
Pythagorean theory of the world as a harmony
of mutually antagonistic elements and the
Platonic notion of the microcosm. Each
suggestion he develops to the full, but when
they lead him to a logical outcome of the in-
differency of all moral conduct, he calls a halt
and saves himself by introducing an idea of
higher power, the doctrine of absolute being
and non-being, which by the Platonists were
identified with the good and the evil in the
inward life. In this ascension the essay,
Compensation, ends, with the idea of compen-

1 Ibid., II., 122.

•ML

THE OVER-SOUL 115

sation mysticized into the doctrine of the pres
ence or the absence of the Divine in man as
the index of virtue or vice.

This result means the final relegation of the
Pythagorean element in Emerson's Platonism
to a subordinate place. A love of contrasts
and of a conception of unity arising out of
diverse elements had led Emerson to over
develop the Pythagorean notion of the uni
verse as a harmony of antagonistic elements.
Plato, it is true, uses the categories of the
Pythagoreans, but not to the extent of justify
ing the prominence that Emerson gave to the
notion in his conception of Plato's system;
nor does the scheme of Plotinus justify Em
erson. It is a clear case of over-statement,
the outcome of which speaks much for the
corrective influence played by Platonism in
Emerson's thinking; it always lies near at
hand as a body of thought to guide, to suggest,
or to correct his thinking.

Such a controlling influence does Platonism
exert over Emerson's mind that he finds in its
mystical teachings a solution of the questions
which the study of the meaning of nature
raised. He had gone on the assumption that
nature was so intimately allied with the mind
of man that "undoubtedly we have no ques-

ii6 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tions to ask which are unanswerable. We
must trust the perfection of the creation so far
as to believe that whatever curiosity the order
of things has awakened in our minds, the order
of things can satisfy." * If, then, a mystical
experience is the highest experience life can
know, the highest truths concerning nature can
be known only by virtue of such an experience.
Nature, then, must be mysticized.

As has been noted already, the method of
nature is presented by Emerson as an eternal
flux or change due to a superabundance of
energy in a metaphysical source. As he views
this ceaseless energy he calls it by the name
which Plotinus had given to the mystic ex
perience. Plotinus describes the participant
in such an experience as "being as it were in
an ecstacy, or energizing enthusiastically." 2
Emerson applies the term ecstasy to the
method of nature. "In short, the spirit and
peculiarity of that impression nature makes
on us is this, that it does not exist to any one
or to any number of particular ends, but to a
numberless and endless benefit; that there is
in it no private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but
the whole is oppressed by one superincumbent

1 Complete Works, I., 3-4.

2 Select Works, 503.

THE OVER-SOUL 117

tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of
life which in conscious beings we call
ecstasy" 1

When Emerson retired to Nantasket Beach
to write The Method of Nature he took with
him Plato's Phcedrus, Meno, and Banquet,
which he diligently read. He also had with
him Proclus, Ocellus Lucanus and certain
Pythagorean Fragments, either those of De-
mophilus, or those to be found in the Life of
Pythagoras by lamblichus.2 It is natural,
then, to expect a decided influence in his essay
of such reading.

Now Ocellus Lucanus, in a short treatise,
set forth the eternal nature of the universe as
it was understood by the Platonists. "It is
credible," he says, "that the universe is with
out beginning, and without an end, from its
figure, from motion, from time and its
essence; and, therefore, it may be concluded
that the world is unbegotten and incorrupti
ble: for the form of its figure is circular; but
a circle is on all sides similar and equal, and
is, therefore, without a beginning, and without
an end. The motion, also, of the universe is
circular, but this motion is stable and without

1 Complete Works, I., 203-204.

2 Ibid., IV., 310.

n8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

transition. Time, likewise, in which motion
exists is infinite, for this neither had a begin
ning, nor will have an end of its circulation.
The essence, too, of the universe is without
egression [into any other place], and is im
mutable, because it is not naturally adapted
to be changed, either from the worse to the
better, or from the better to the worse. From
all these arguments, therefore, it is obviously
credible that the world is unbegotten and in
corruptible." 1

Such a conception was easily caught up by
Emerson. It taught the eternity of nature
whose operations indicated a ceaseless round
of energizing. Emerson's adherence to the
truth of the correlation of matter and mind
made it easy to transfer the idea of ecstasy,
which strictly applies to conscious beings, to
the method of nature. He thus speaks of
nature as "a work of ecstasy, to be represented >
by a circular movement, as intention might be :
signified by a straight line of definite length." 2

But this application of the doctrine of cor
relation leads to a palpable over-statement.
Usually, Emerson argues from a law of
nature to a law of mind; but in this case he

1 On the Nature of the Universe, S-g.

2 Complete Works, I., 201.

THE OVER-SOUL 119

has done the reverse. Ecstasy is attributed to
nature and not deduced from her method. It
is true that in the opening of his essay he
approaches the subject in his usual manner of
studying nature for what it reveals of the
mind, but in reality it is the idea of ecstasy
as a law of the mind that forms the true sub
ject of his work. Its closing part thus shows
how there is no function or office in man but
is rightly discharged by this divine method.
True science is ecstatic. In the pursuit of
virtue he who aims at progress should aim at
an infinite, not a special benefit. The law of
ecstasy holds also in love, in genius, and in
history. Filled with the idea, then, he
strained truth somewhat in boldly teaching
ecstasy as the law of nature.

Emerson is more successful in identifying
man and nature when he describes the mystic
experience. A complete union of the soul of
man with the Divine means an absolute one
ness of man with all things as well. "In that
deep force," he writes, "the last fact behind
which analysis cannot go, all things find their
common origin. For the sense of being
which in calm hours rises, we know not how,
in the soul, is not diverse from things, from
space, from light, from time, from man, but

120 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

one with them, and proceeds obviously from
the same source whence their life and being
also proceed. We first share the life by which
things exist and afterwards see them as appear
ances in nature and forget that we have shared
their cause." l

This is a conception of being which Plotinus
had taught him to appreciate. "This is that
which is entirely being," writes Plotinus;
"and this again is that which in no respect is
deficient in existence. But since it is per
fectly being, it is not in want of any thing in
order that it may be preserved and be, but to
other things which appear to be, it is the
cause of their apparent existence. ... It
is necessary, however, that it should be per
fectly being. Hence it is requisite it should
accede to existence, possessing all things in
itself, and being at once all things, and one
all, if by these peculiarities we define being." 2

The mysticism of Plotinus was also effective
in providing another solution of the question
of the origin of the outward universe. When
we ask the questions, Whence is matter? and
Whereto? we learn, so Emerson tells us, "that
the highest is present to the soul of man;

1 Complete Works, II., 64.

2 Select Works, 137-138.

THE OVER-SOUL 121

that the dread universal essence, which is not
wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all
in one, and each entirely, is that for which
all things exist, and that by which they
are; that spirit creates; that behind nature,
throughout nature, spirit is present; one and
not compound it does not act upon us from
without, that is, in space and time, but spirit
ually, or through ourselves: therefore, that
spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not
build up nature around us, but puts it forth
through us, as the life of the tree puts forth
new branches and leaves through the pores of
the old." 1

In such a statement is recognized the teach
ing of Plotinus regarding the creative power
of souls. "It is requisite," he holds, "that
there should not only be souls, but that their
effects also should have a perspicuous subsist
ence (since every nature possesses an essential
ability of producing something posterior to
itself, and of unfolding it into light from its
occult subsistence in dormant power), and
this as if from a certain indivisible principle
and seed, proceeding to a sensible extremity,
while that which has a priority of subsistence
always abides in its proper seat, but that which

1 Complete Works, L, 63-64.

122 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

is consequent is generated from an ineffable
power, such as belongs to superior beings, and
is the proper characteristic of their nature." 1

A similar explanation Plotinus gives in his
doctrine of the emanation of all things from
the One. Of the One he writes: "What
shall we say he is? The power of all things,
without whose subsistence the universality of
things would never have had a being; nor
would intellect have been, which is the first
and universal life; for that which subsists
above life is the cause of life: since energy of
life, which is all things, is not the first, but
emanates from this principle as its ineffable
fountain. . . . Or conceive the life of a
mighty tree, propagating itself through the
whole tree, the principle at the same time re
maining without being divided through the
whole, but, as it were, established in the root;
this, then, will afford an universal and abun
dant life to the tree, but will abide itself, with
out multiplication, and subsisting as the
principle of multitude." 2

As a result of the doctrine of emanation,
Emerson regards nature as a perpetual effect.
She is passive to the presence of the Divine

1 Five Books of Plotinus, 275-276.

2 Ibid., 237-238.

THE OVER-SOUL 123

power just as man should be; her passiveness
corresponds to man's humility. "The aspect
of Nature is devout," Emerson holds. "Like
the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended
head, and hands folded upon the breast. The
happiest man is he who learns from nature
the lesson of worship.'7 1

Such conceptions reflect the teachings of
Plotinus. His system had ended in establish
ing the absolute self-sufficiency of the One
as well as the absolute nonentity of matter.
Between these two extremes was a series of
beings who owe all their life to a power over
them of which the One is the ultimate source.
By submission, then, matter was endowed with
quality and so likewise soul. And though the
life of the soul seems an upward progress
with a union of itself with the One as its end,
yet in reality this progress is made by ridding
itself of all its characteristic life in order to
unite itself with the Divine. Submission,
therefore, becomes the one necessary condition
on which nature and man can hope to have
being: for their life is given to them by this
Over-Soul.

In the treatment of the Over-Soul we can
appreciate the hold which the system of

1 Complete Works, I., 61.

124 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Plotinus had upon Emerson's way of thought.
Toward the end of Nature he reviews his
attempts to explain matter and he finds them
deficient. The theories of symbolism and
correlation of mind and matter did not suffice.
They suggested spirit, but they left God out
of him. In other words, he finds these ideal
istic theories inadequate to explain the mean
ing of the universe ; idealism is but "a useful
introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us
of the eternal distinction between soul and the
world." * It is to mysticism, then, that he
turns for the final solution.

Mysticism thus becomes the most important
element in Emerson's Platonism. In his re
view of Plato he notes the absence of this ele
ment in Plato's work. Yet he holds that
"mysticism finds in Plato all its texts ;" 2 and
he agrees with the Platonists in making Plato
do honor to the ineffable One, which it is the
object of mysticism to realize in the experience
of man. But Emerson does not find Plato
teaching this doctrine, for he remarks of
him, "he never writes in ecstasy, or catches
us up into poetic raptures." 3 This mystic

1 Complete Works, L, 63.

2 Ibid., IV., 40.
*Ibid., IV., 61.

INTELLECT 125

enjoyment Plotinus afforded him. It was
natural, then, that he should find Plotinus the
great need of his life at one time; for in him
he became acquainted with a scheme of
thought in which mysticism of the purest in
tellectual type was taught.

II.

INTELLECT.

The mysticism of Plotinus is a rational
mysticism; it arises as a logical result of a
purely rational conception of knowledge. It
is an experience which intellect enjoys, intel
lect being the principle of soul next in order
to the One, or the principle of unity. Thus it
comes about that Plotinus and the Platonists
have much to say of intellect. And as teach
ers of the intellect Emerson esteems the
Platonists most highly.

In his primary conception of intellect Em
erson is one with the Platonists. "How can
we speak of the action of the mind under any
divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of
its works, and so forth, since it melts will into
perception, knowledge into act? Each be
comes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision

126 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

is not like the vision of the eye, but is union
with the things known." l Such is the teach
ing of Plotinus also. Describing intellect, he
writes in a sentence, a part of which Emer
son appropriates, "It likewise alone is, and is
always, but is never future; for when the
future arrives, it then also is; nor is it the
past." 2 He furthermore holds : "Whatever
it possesses, it possesses from itself. But if
it perceives intellectually by and from itself, it
is itself that which it perceives." 3

Emerson also agrees with the teaching of
Platonism in holding that all thought is but a
reception rather than a self-directed activity of
the mind from within outward. "Our think
ing," he holds, "is a pious reception. Our
truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much
by too violent direction given by our will, as
by too great negligence. We do not deter
mine what we will think. We only open our
senses, clear away as well as we can all ob
struction from the fact, and suffer the intellect
to see." 4 More explicitly, thought "is the
advent of truth into the world, a form of
thought now for the first time bursting into

1 Complete Works, II., 323.

z Select Works, 263.

8 Ibid., 292.

4 Complete Works, II., 328.

INTELLECT 127

the universe, a child of the old eternal soul,
a piece of genuine and immeasurable great

ness."

In the manner in which according to Ploti-
nus the One gives birth to Intellect is found
the method of reasoning which Emerson uses
in describing all thinking as reception. The
One is self-sufficient and, therefore, is in need
of no creatures for its own satisfaction. And
yet it possesses such superabundant energy
that it overflows; and this overflow constitutes
potential intellect. "For the one" writes
Plotinus, "being perfect, in consequence of not
seeking after, or possessing, or being in want
of anything, it becomes as it were overflow
ing, and the super-plenitude of it produces
something else. That, however, which is gen
erated from it is converted to it, and is filled,
and was generated looking to it. But this is
intellect." 2 Thus conversion to the One con
stitutes the essence of intellect; the state
previous to this conversion can be only po
tentially intellectual. And this conversion to
the One is what Emerson means in his teach
ing that all thought is but a pious reception.

At the same time that Emerson views think-

>

d., II., 335-
2 Select Works, 398.

ia8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ing as a pious reception, he also describes it
as an ascending process of mind in search of
an absolute cause. This is the conception
underlying his essay, Circles. "Our life," he
says, "is an apprenticeship to the truth that
around every circle another can be drawn ;
that there is no end in nature, but every end is
/ a beginning; that there is always another
dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every
deep a lower deep opens." 1

It is the same process that Plato and the
Platonists call the dialectic, or the ascension
of mind from particulars to universals. "It
is requisite," observes Simplicius, in the de
scription of this process of mind, which Emer
son had marked in his copy of Proclus, "that
he who ascends to the principle of things
should investigate whether it is possible there
can be anything better than the supposed
principle; and if something more excellent is
found, the same inquiry should again be made
respecting that, till we arrive at the highest
conceptions, than which we have no longer
any more venerable. Nor should we stop in
our ascent till we find this to be the case.
For there is no occasion to fear that our pro
gression will be through an unsubstantial

1 Complete Works, II., 301.

INTELLECT 129

void, by conceiving something about the first
principles which is greater and more tran
scendent than their nature. For it is not pos
sible for our conceptions to take such a mighty
leap as to equal, and much less to pass beyond
the dignity of the first principles of things.'7 l

Receptivity and the onward progress of the
dialectic seem inconsistent ideas. Both are
found, however, in Plotinus. The dialectic
he inherited from Plato but the idea of re
ceptivity is one which he was logically com
pelled to accept by reason of his insistence
upon the nature of the One as the source of
all things and yet as a principle apart from all
things and in no need of them. Only by put
ting itself in a passive state could a being be
neath the One receive its influence. The
life of the intellect is thus a progress of the
soul ever ascending into new realms but ever
divesting itself of all it has received in the
realm it has just passed through. These two
ideas — that of the dialectic and that of thought
as reception — Emerson takes over from
Plotinus and makes no attempt to reconcile
them. He treats each as it suits his purpose.

Emerson agrees with Platonism in teach-

1 Quoted in Proclus, On the Theology of Plato, I., Intro
duction, p. 32.

130 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ing that intellect has power to annul fate.
Fate he finds everywhere, "in matter, mind,
morals; in race, in retardations of strata, and
in thought and character as well." l And by
fate he means laws of the world, fate being
felt as bound or limitation.2 But he main
tains: "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a
man thinks, he is free." 3 He explains this
triumph of thought over fate more fully.
"The revelation of Thought takes man out of
servitude into freedom. We rightly say of
ourselves, we were born and afterward we
were born again, and many times . . .
The day of days, the great day of the feast of
life, is that in which the inward eye opens to
the Unity in things, to the omnipresence of
law : — sees that what is must be and ought to
be, or is the best ... If truth come to
our mind we suddenly expand to its dimen
sions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as
law-givers ; we speak for Nature : we prophesy
and divine." 4

In stating this doctrine Emerson is follow
ing the argument of Proclus On Providence

1 Complete Works, VI., 21.

2 Ibid., VI., 4, 21-22.
a Ibid.f VI., 23.
*Ibid., VI, 25.

INTELLECT 131

and Fate. Proclus' conception of fate is one
with Emerson's. "If therefore, not only in
us, and other animals and plants," observes
Proclus, "but in this universe also much
prior to bodies, there is one nature of the
world, which is corrective and motive of the
subsistence of bodies; as it is also in us, (or
why do we call all bodies the progeny of na
ture?), it is indeed necessary that nature
should be the cause of things that are con
nected, and that in this what we call Fate
should be investigated. And on this account
perhaps the daemoniacal Aristotle also is ac
customed to call those augmentations or gen
erations which are effected beside the accus
tomed time, deviations from Fate. And the
divine Plato says, 'that the world considered
by itself, without the intellectual Gods, is con
volved as being corporeal by Fate and innate
desire.' The oracles of the gods also accord
with these and bear witness to our demonstra
tions when they say: 'Look not upon Na
ture, for the name of it is fatal.' And thus
we have discovered what Fate is, and how it is
the nature of this world, and a certain incor
poreal essence." 1 Fate thus becomes identi-

1 On the Theology of Plato, II., 450.

132 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

fied with the operations of nature. Or as
Emerson puts it, "the book of Nature is the
book of fate." 1

It is to be noted that the oracle referred to
is used by Emerson. "It is wholesome to
man," he observes, "to look not at Fate, but
the other way: the practical view is the other.
His sound relation to these facts is to use and
command, not to cringe to them. 'Look not
on Nature for her name is fatal,' said the
oracle. The too much contemplation of these
limits induces meanness." 2

Proclus also teaches that the way of escape
from fate is through the intellectual activity
of the soul. "In short, we must say," he
writes, "that the rational and intellectual soul
in whatever way it may energize, is beyond
body and sense; and therefore it is necessary
that it should have an essence separable from
both these. This, however, though of itself
now evident, I will again manifest from
hence, that when it energizes according to
nature, it is superior to the influence of Fate,
but that when it falls into sense, and becomes
irrational and corporeal, it follows the natures
that are beneath it, and living with them as

1 Complete Works, VI., 15.

2 Ibid., VI., 23.

INTELLECT 133

with intoxicated neighbours, is held in subjec
tion by a cause that has dominion over things
that are different from the rational essence." 1
And the highest form of intellectual action, he
tells us, "is obtained by exciting the pro
fundity of the soul, which is no longer intel
lectual, and adapting it to union with the
one!' 2 It is the same mystic experience that
Emerson refers to as the day "in which the in
ward eye opens to the Unity of things." 3

As an inference from the superior power of
of intellect to rise above the limitations of fate
Emerson presents a slightly new conception of
fate. "Fate then," he concludes, "is a name
for facts not yet passed under the fire of
thought; for causes which are unpenetrated." 4
It is, however, in accordance with the notion
of Proclus who holds that "we denominate
that which is evolved through many causes
complicated with each other and unknown to
us, no otherwise than Fate." 5

Emerson also agrees with the Platonists in
the conception of the ascendency of intellect
over time. As Proclus states it, "Every in-

1On the Theology of Plato, II., 456.

*Ibid., 464.

8 Complete Works, VI., 25.

* Ibid., VI., 31.

5 On the Theology of Plato, II., 447.

134 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tellect has its essence, power and energy in
eternity." 1 Emerson shares the same belief
when he states: "All our intellectual action,
not promises but bestows a feeling of absolute
existence. We are taken out of time and
breathe a purer air. I know not whence we
draw the assurance of prolonged life, of a life
which shoots that gulf we call death and takes
hold of what is real and abiding, by so many
claims as from our intellectual history." 2

On this power of intellect Emerson bases
his belief in immortality. "This is the way
we rise," he tells us. "Within every man's
thought is a higher thought — within the char
acter he exhibits to-day a higher character.
The youth puts off the illusions of the child,
the man puts off the ignorance and the tumul
tuous passions of youth; proceeding thence
puts off the egotism of manhood, and be
comes at last a public and universal soul. He
is rising to greater heights, but also rising to
realities; the outer relations and circum
stances dying out, he entering deeper into
God, God into him, until the last garment of
egotism falls, and he is with God— shares the

-12.
2 Complete Works, VIII., 340.

INTELLECT 135

will and the immensity of the First Cause." 1
It is a way of reasoning that Plotinus had
taught him. "Now, however, men perceiv
ing that the soul of the greater part of the
human race is defiled with vice, they do not
reason about it either as a divine or an im
mortal thing. But it is necessary, in consid
ering the nature of everything, to direct our
attention to the purity of it; since whatever is
added, is always an impediment to the knowl
edge of that to which it is added. Consider
the soul, therefore, by taking away [that
which is extraneous] ; or rather, let him who
takes this away survey himself, and he will
believe himself to be immortal, when he be
holds himself in the intelligible world, and
situated in a pure abode. For he will per
ceive intellect seeing not anything sensible,
nor any of these mortal objects, but by an
eternal power contemplating that which is
eternal ; everything in the intelligible world,
and itself also being then luminous, in conse
quence of being enlightened by the truth pro
ceeding from the good, which illuminates all
intelligibles with reality. By such a soul as
this, therefore, it may be properly said,

id., VIII., 348-349.

136 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Farewell, a God immortal now am I,

having ascended to divinity, and earnestly
striving to become similar to him." 1

A less mystic explanation of the manner in
which intellectual activity makes for immor
tality is found in the feeling of absoluteness
attendent upon the vision of truth. "Salt,"
Emerson explains, "is a good preserver; cold
is: but a truth cures the taint of mortality bet
ter, and 'preserves from harm until another
period.' A sort of absoluteness attends all
perception of truth — no smell of age, no hint
of corruption. It is self-sufficing, sound, en
tire." 2

As the quotation Emerson uses shows, the
idea is Plato's. In his Phcedrus Plato ex
plains how the human soul, which is immor
tal, lived in the eternal world before it ap
peared on earth. Its main care in that world
was to behold truth. "And this is the rea
son," Plato adds, "for the great anxiety to be
hold the field of truth, where it is; the proper
pasture for the best part of the soul happens
to be in the meadow there, and it is the na
ture of the wing by which the soul is borne
aloft, to be nourished by it; and this is a

1 Select Works, 243.

2 Complete Works, VIIL, 340.

INTELLECT 137

law of Adrastia, that whatever soul, in ac
companying a deity, has beheld any of the
true essences, it shall be free from harm until
the next revolution, and if it can always ac
complish this, it shall be always free from
harm." 1

Eternity, then, in which intellect has its be
ing, takes the place in Emerson's thought of
immortality; it involves, as he says, "not dura
tion but a state of abandonment to the High
est, and so the sharing of His perfection." 2
"Is immortality," he asks, "only an intellec
tual quality, or, shall I say, only an energy,
there being no passive? He has it, and he
alone, who gives life to all names, persons,
things where he comes. No religion, not the
wildest mythology dies for him; no art is
lost. He vivifies what he touches. Future
state is an illusion for the ever-present state.
It is not length of life, but depth of life. It
is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of
time, as all high action of the mind does:
when we are living in the sentiments we ask
no questions about time. The spiritual world
takes place — that which is always the same." 3

iBohn translation, I., 324.
2 Complete Works, VIIL, 349.
s Ibid., 347-

138 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

This conception is identical with the teach
ing of Platonism. "According to the oracle,"
says Proclus, "eternity is the cause of never-
failing life, of unwearied power, and unslug-
gish energy. . . . Eternity is the father
and supplier of infinite life; since eternity is
also the cause of all immortality — and perpe
tuity. And Plotinus, exhibiting, in a most
divinely inspired manner, the peculiarity of
eternity, according to the theology of Plato
defines it to be infinite life, at once unfolding
into light the whole of itself, and its own be
ing . . . For eternity is infinite power
abiding in one, and proceeding stably." 1

In his conception of intellect, then, Emer
son agrees with the teachings of Platonism in
regarding the nature of the intellect's vision
as an actual union with the thing seen, in hold
ing that thinking is receptivity and at the
same time an onward progress of the mind,
and in maintaining the triumph of intellect
over fate and time.

1 On the Theology of Plato, I., 190-191.

THE WORLD-SOUL 139

in.

THE WORLD-SOUL.

Thus far Emerson has spoken of soul as
present chiefly in the consciousness of men;
but he holds with the Platonists that there
is a soul at work in the universe outside of
man as well as in his inward life. This is
with him "the sublime creed that the world is
not the product of manifold power, but of one
will, of one mind; and that one mind is every
where active, in each ray of the star, in each
wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes
that will is everywhere balked and baffled, be
cause things are made so, and not otherwise." 1

This belief corresponds to the tenet of Uni
versal Soul taught by Platonism. Below the
One and Intellect is the Anima Mundi, the
Universal Soul, which is the intermediating
principle between the world of pure intelli
gence and the world of matter. "Every soul,"
writes Plotinus, "ought to consider in the first
place, that soul produced all animals, and in
spired them with life: viz., those animals
which the earth and sea nourish, those which
live in the air, and the divine stars contained

1 Complete Works, I., 123-124.

140 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

in the heavens. Soul also made the sun ; soul
made and adorned this mighty heaven. Soul,
too, circumvolves it in an orderly course, be
ing of a nature different from the things
which it adorns, which it moves, and causes to
live, and is necessarily more honourable than
these. . . . What the mode is, however,
by which life is supplied to the universe, and
to each of its parts, may be considered to be
as follows : . . . Let a quiet soul behold
that other mighty soul, externally as it were,
on all sides flowing and infused into, pene
trating and illuminating the quiescent mass.
For just as the rays of the sun darting on a
dark cloud cause it to become splendid, and
golden to the view, thus also, soul entering
into the body of heaven gave it life, gave it im
mortality, and excited it from its torpid state.
But heaven being moved with a perpetual mo
tion, through the guidance of a wise soul,
became a blessed animal. It also acquired
dignity through soul becoming its inhabitant,
since, prior to soul it was a dead body, viz.,
earth and water, or rather the darkness of mat
ter and non-entity; and as some one says, 'that
which the Gods abhor.' " l

Emerson uses the conception of the Anima

1 Select Works, 256-258.

THE WORLD-SOUL 141

Mundi in his poem, The World-Soul. As a
refuge, from the vice of men in the centers of
wealth and trade he turns to glances of a
spirit which haunts him, in the broad aspects
of nature, in human beings, in strains of
music. Its secret has never been fully solved
but its operations in the world are constant and
relentless. "But soul," observes Plotinus,
speaking of the soul of the world, "by the
power of essence has dominion over bodies in
such a way, that they are generated and sub
sist, just as she leads them, since they are un
able from the first to oppose her will." 1 Or
as Emerson puts it:

"For Destiny never swerves

Nor yields to men the helm;
He shoots his thoughts, by hidden nerves,

Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Daemon sits,

With roses and a shroud;
He has his way, and deals his gifts —

But ours is not allowed." 2

In this power Emerson finds the hope of the
world, which will be fulfilled in a fairer

345.
2 Complete Works, IX., 18.

142 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

world which the world-soul will create out
of this one.

A finer poetic result of Emerson's musings
on the world-soul is to be found in his little
lyric, Music, in which he works out a sugges
tion he found in a note appended by Taylor
to a passage in Proclus. Commenting on the
mutual sympathy shared by all things in the
universe, Taylor remarks that he who holds to
such a belief "will survey the universe as one
great animal, all whose parts are in union and
consent with each other; so that nothing is
foreign and detached; nothing, strictly speak
ing, void of sympathy and life. For though
parts of the world, when considered as sep
arated from the whole, are destitute of pecul
iar life ; yet they possess some degree of ani
mation, however inconsiderable, when viewed
with relation to the universe. Life indeed
may be compared to a perpetual and univer
sal sound; and the soul of the world resem
bles a lyre, or some other musical instru
ment, from which we may suppose this sound
to be emitted. But from the unbounded dif
fusion as it were of the mundane soul, every
thing participates of this harmonical sound, in
greater or less perfection, according to the
dignity of its nature. So that while life

THE WORLD-SOUL 143

everywhere resounds, the most abject of be
ings may be said to retain a faint echo of the
melody produced by the mundane lyre." 1

In the last sentence of this quotation is the
motif of Emerson's poem, Music.

"Let me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still :
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

'It is not only in the rose,

It is not only in the bird,

Not only where the rainbow glows,

Nor in the song of woman heard,

But in the darkest, meanest things

There alway, alway something sings.

"'Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings."

And thus it appears that Emerson follows

the Theology of Plato, II., 395, note i.

H4 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the Platonists in their account of the spiritual
principles of the universe. His doctrines of
the Over-soul, of Intellect, of a World-Soul
are in general agreement with the three prin
ciples of the Platonists. But he is not careful
to distinguish them scientifically as the Plato
nists do ; they all go to inform his conception
of Soul. Soul he thus finds everywhere in the
highest and lowest of created things ; but his
main purpose was to assert its presence, the
presence of the Divine, in man, who comes to
experience it in a mystical resolution of his
own life into that of the Divine. This is the
center of Emerson's thought, as it was of Plo-
tinus', and it shows itself in his repeated em
phasis upon the need of soul in life. So ab
sorbing is this power of soul that it includes
not only the life of man but the very life of
nature.

CHAPTER IV

LOVE AND BEAUTY

A DISCUSSION of love and beauty fig
ures somewhat conspicuously in Emer
son's work. In his examination into the
meaning of nature he finds beauty serving a
noble want of man. To this subject he de
votes a separate essay in his Conduct of Life
and he gives a poetical rendering of the theme
in the Ode to Beauty. Likewise in his treat
ment of love, a separate essay deals with the
question and his poem Initial, Dcemonic and
Celestial Love presents the subject in a poeti
cal trilogy. Reference to such topics is fre
quent in his work; for as an admirer of Plato-
nism he came to feel the inspiration which its
philosophy of love and beauty stirs within the
mind of all its true students.

Plenty of material in his Platonic sources
was at hand. Plato had given impetus to the
discussion in his Banquet and Phcedrus. His
quickening influence is felt in Plutarch, who
leaves a dialogue on love, and in Plotinus

146 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

whose discussions on beauty, especially, are
of first importance in the history of aesthetics.
In Taylor's translation of a portion of his En-
neads, An Essay on the Beautiful (1792),
Emerson had an available source. In the
translation of the Select Works of Plotinus he
also found a valuable extract On Intelligible
Beauty, which he carefully indexed and thor
oughly digested. Proclus in his On the The
ology of Plato provided him with an ex
position which Emerson's index shows was
one of his "lustres." In his Commentaries on
the Timceus of Plato the same author left
other patches of theorizing on beauty.
Emerson availed himself of all these sources
and in his writings on love and beauty con
forms rather strictly to the method of the
Platonists.

His Initial, Dcemonic and Celestial Love, as
its title indicates, is a recognition of a divi
sion of the subject which Plato had made in
his Banquet. There in the speech of one of
the characters, Pausanias, he laid down the
distinction between a celestial love and a
vulgar love which persisted throughout the
entire course of Neo-Platonic speculation.1
Through the mouth of another speaker, Soc-

1 Bohn translation, III., 491.

rut

LOVE AND BEAUTY 147

rates, who hands down the idea of a certain
prophetess, Diotima, Plato also explains that
love is "a great daemon . . . and being
in the middle space between gods and men it
fills up the whole." * Emerson's Initial,
Daemonic and Celestial Love thus recognizes
the distinction which Plato had made. In
developing the subject the influence of Plato-
nism makes itself felt especially in the second
and third parts — Daemonic and Celestial
Love.

In setting forth his conception of daemonic
love Emerson avails himself of what the
ancients had said about daemons. Plato's ref
erence to these had started a discussion among
the Platonists, which in Plutarch, Plotinus,
lamblichus, and Proclus was prolific of much
speculation. The subject evidently attracted
Emerson who fortunately has left an ab
stract of his views as gathered from his
sources. "The ancients believed," he writes,
"that a genius or demon took possession at
birth of each mortal, to guide him ; that these
genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire
partly immersed in the bodies which they gov
erned; on an evil man, resting on his head; in
a good man, mixed with his substance. They

148 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

thought the same genius, at the death of
its ward, entered a new born child, and they
pretended to guess the pilot by the sailing of
the ship." 1

This is an abstract from several sources. In
lamblichus' Mysteries of the Egyptians,
Chaldeans, and Assyrians, Emerson found in
a foot note by Taylor the remark: " Accord
ing to the Egyptians every one received his
proper daemon at the hour of his birth." 2
And in the text of the same work he had noted
that "there is one daemon who is the guardian
and governor of everything that is in us." 3
In Plutarch's dialogue A Discourse Concern
ing Socrates' s Dcemon, Emerson found an ac
count of the connection between men and
daemons on which he bases the second part of
his statement. "Every soul doth not mix her
self after one sort," Plutarch observes, "for
some plunge themselves into the body, and so
in this life their whole frame is corrupted by
appetite and passion; others are mixed as to
some part, but the purer part still remains
without the body — it is not drawn down into
it, but it swims above, and touches the ex-

1 Complete Works, VI., 287.

2 p. 320, note,
s p. 322.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 149

tremest part of the man's head; it is like a
cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part
of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and
is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh.
That part that is plunged into the body is
called the soul, but the uncorrupted part is
called the mind, and the vulgar think it is
within them as likewise they imagine the
image reflected from a glass to be in that.
But the more intelligent, who know it to be
without, call it a Daemon." 1

It is to be noted, however, that Emerson
does not follow Plutarch's distinction be
tween the daemon in the good and in the
evil man. In Plutarch the daemon re
mains above the good man; in Emerson the
daemon in the good man is mixed throughout
his substance and in the bad man rests upon
his head. This difference may be due to an
inaccurate interpretation of Plutarch; or, it
may be, that in his account Emerson has
blended the notion which Proclus gives of the
daemon of Socrates, who "according to the
energy of his daemon, received the light pro
ceeding from thence, neither in his dianoetic
part alone, nor in his doxastic powers, but also
in his spirit, the illumination of the daemon

1 Morals, II., 410.

i,5o THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

suddenly diffusing itself through the whole
of his life, and now moving sense itself." 1

The final portion of Emerson's statement
refers to a passage in Plutarch's dialogue
which Emerson himself extracts in his essay
on Plutarch. "Early this morning, asking
Epaminondas about the manner of Lysis's
burial, I found that Lysis had taught him as
far as the incommunicable mysteries of our
sect; and that the same Daemon that waited on
Lysis, presided over him, if I can guess at the
pilot from the sailing of the ship." 2

These beliefs concerning the daemon Emer
son works into his poem, Dcemonic Lovt:

"Close, close to men,
Like undulating layer of air,
High above their heads,
The potent plain of Daemons spreads.
Stands to each human soul its own,
For watch and ward and furtherance,
In the snares of Nature's dance;
And the lustre and the grace
To fascinate each youthful heart,
Beaming from its counterpart,
Translucent through the mortal covers,
Is the Daemon's form and face.

1 Quoted in The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas
Taylor, I., 22-23.

2 Morals, II., 399.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 151

To and fro the Genius hies —

A gleam which plays and hovers

Over the maiden's head,

And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes." 1

In this passage there is a recognition of the
existence of a guardian spirit over each hu
man soul and of the manner of its appearance
as Plutarch had given it in his picturesque ex
planation of the relation between the daemon
and its ward, the soul. In developing the
idea of a multitude of daemons above us Emer
son was working in accordance with a note on
the benevolent daemons given by Taylor in his
Plato: "They stand," he writes of the
daemons, "as it were over our heads, discourse
with each other, and in the mean time specu
late our affairs, disapprove our evil deeds, and
commend such as are good." 2

The conception of daemonic love set forth
in Emerson is two fold. Daemonic love is
first presented as a love of beauty in its noble
purity. This beauty snaps all the ties the soul
has recognized and leads the soul to follow in
its quest. The daemons lend this alluring
beauty unto men. But there is another race
of daemons who skirt man's path with strength

1 Complete Works, IX., no.

2 III., 343, note I.

152 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and terror.1 That is, there are evil daemons
as well as good and an evil daemonic love along
with a noble kind.

The evil kind of daemonic love is character
istic of those geniuses who exult in their own
intellectual prowess and insult the multitude;
it is a love springing out of the pride of intel
lect. Thus the inspiring daemons of this evil
love are described:

"The Daemons are self-seeking
Their fierce and limitary will
Draws men to their likeness still." 2

This idea is in keeping with what Synesius
writes of evil daemons : "These daemons, who
are the progeny of matter wish to make souls
their own, and the manner in which they at
tack them is as follows : It is not possible in
the earth that there should be someone who
has not a portion of the irrational soul . . .
Evil daemons through this, as through that
which is allied to them, invade and betray the
animal. . . , Thus daemons inflame de
sire, thus they inflame anger, and all such evils
as are the sisters of these; associating with
souls through the parts that are adapted to

1 Complete Works, IX., HI.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 153

themselves, which naturally perceive the pres
ence of the daemons, and are excited and cor
roborated by them, rising against intellect,
till they either vanquish the whole soul, or de
spair of its caption." 1

Of the fate of these destructive daemons
Emerson writes :

"Therefore comes an hour from Jove
Which his ruthless will defies,
And the dogs of Fate unties." 2

This means the destruction of the daemon and
his work.

The suggestion probably came from Cud-
worth, who speaks of "those Empedoclean
demons lapsed from heaven, and pursued with
divine vengeance," 3 which Plutarch had re
ferred to.4 These daemons had been driven
out of heaven by the offended gods and forced
to wander about in restless torment. The
parallel, at any rate, is quite in keeping with
Emerson's way of using the fragments of
mythology he found in Cudworth.

In his treatment of celestial love also the
tenets of Platonism are boldly expressed. In

1 On Providence, in Select Works of Plotinus, 535.

2 Complete Works, IX., 113.

3 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 47.

4 Plutarch, Morals, V., 420-421.

154 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

keeping with the scheme of an ascending scale
of love which Platonism had developed,
Emerson places celestial love at the summit.

"Higher far into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,
Over the flickering Daemon film,
Thou must mount for love;
Into vision where all form
Into one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride
Visibly revolves;

Where the starred, eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like;
Where good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.

"There Past, Present, Future, shoot
Triple blossoms from one root;
Substances at base divided,
In their summits are united ;
There the holy essence rolls,
One through separated souls;
And the sunny JEon sleeps
Folding Nature in its deeps,
And every fair and every good,
Known in part, or known impure,
To men below,

LOVE AND BEAUTY 155

In their archetypes endure,

The race of gods,

Or those we erring own,

Are shadows flitting up and down

In the still abodes.

The circles of that sea are laws

Which publish and which hide the cause." 1

At the basis of this conception lies the idea
of the absolute unity of things. The love of
this is a celestial love. "For, since the soul is
different from God," says Plotinus in one of
his accounts of the union of the soul with the
One — the god he speaks of, "but is derived
from him, she necessarily loves him, and when
she is there she has a celestial love; but the
love which she here possesses is common and
vulgar. For in the intelligible world the
celestial Venus reigns, but here the popular
Venus, who is as it were meretricious." 2

Thus in explaining the nature of this love
Emerson accepts the Plotinian or Neo-Pla-
tonic scheme rather than the Platonic, which
ended in a vision of absolute beauty rather than
of an absolute One. In Emerson love ends in
a contemplation of the absolute oneness of all
form, conditions, substances, and souls. Of

1 Complete Works, IX., 115-116.

2 Select Works, 497.

156 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

this principle Plotinus writes: "But that is
formless, and is even without intelligible
form. For the nature of the one being gen
erative of all things, is not any one of them.
Neither therefore, is it a certain thing, nor a
quality, nor a quantity, nor intellect, nor soul,
nor that which is moved, nor again that which
stands still. Nor is it in place, or in time;
but is by itself uniform, or rather without
form, being prior to all form, to motion and
to permanency." *

The couplet explaining how Past, Present,
and Future shoot from one root is a reminis
cence of the conception of the intelligible
world which possesses all things in eternity.
For intellect, which there reigns, as Plotinus
says, "alone is, and is always, but is never fu
ture; for when the future arrives, it then also
is; nor is it the past" 2

One with Plotinus is the idea of the exist
ence of all things in their archetypes in the
world of pure intellect. He holds that all be
ings exist primarily in intellect. "Hence,"
he adds, "it is necessary that these things
should be prior to the world, not as impres
sions from other things, but as archetypes, and

1 Select Works, 478.

2 Ibid., 263.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 157

primary natures, and the essence of the intel
lect." 1 Inasmuch as in intellect all things
are together without respect to time and place,
they are conceived by Plotinus to be in eter
nity2 — an idea which Emerson alludes to in
his lines on JEon. lEon is the English name
for a«oi/ (eternity).

Into Emerson's account the imagery of
Plato's Phcedrus also enters. In his narrative
of the life of souls in the intelligible world
Plato tells how all that are able revolve about
pure ideas which they behold and whose life
they drink in. "For those that are called im
mortal," he writes, "when they reach the sum
mit, proceeding outside, stand on the back of
heaven, and while they are stationed here, its
revolution carries them round, and they be
hold the external regions of heaven." 3 Al
luding to this Emerson thus directs the
lover to

"a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride
Visibly revolves." 4

The nature of poetry permitted Emerson to

1 /&»</., 293.

2 Ibid., 186.

3Bohn translation, I., 323.

* Complete Works, IX., 115.

158 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

give a highly concentrated account of love as
conceived by Plato and the Platonists ; it also
permitted him to be impersonal. But in the
more familiar form of the essay he was com
pelled to relate this theory to the ways of
actual experience. Thus he came to write in
his essay on Friendship: "My friends have
come to me unsought. The great God gave
them to me. By oldest right, by the divine
affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or
rather not I, but the deity in me and in them
derides and cancels the thick walls of individ
ual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance,
at which he usually connives, and now makes
many one." 1

This account lacks the wealth of metaphysi
cal statement that characterizes his poem,
Celestial Love, but it shows how Emerson ap
plied his metaphysics to his own life. Be
neath the passage is the conception of the One
which here unites his friends and himself into
one mystic communion.

And yet he is true to the teaching of the
Platonists in making that mystic experience of
the One a solitary communion of the soul with
the Absolute. This mystic union of many
friends is not satisfactory. Hence he passes

i Ibid., II., 194.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 159

on to observe that the soul demands an abso
lutely solitary union with itself. "I cannot
deny it, O friend," he continues, "that the
vast shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee
also in its pied and painted immensity, — thee
also, compared with whom all else is shadow.
Thou are not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is
— thou are not my soul, but a picture and
effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately,
and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak.
Is it not that the soul puts forth friends as the
trees puts forth leaves, and presently, by the
germination of new buds, extrudes the old
leaf? The law of nature is alternation for
evermore. Each electrical state superinduces
the opposite. The soul environs itself with
friends that it may enter into a grander self-
acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for
a season that it may exalt its conversation or
society. This method betrays itself along the
whole history of our personal relations." 1

In such an account the necessity of soli
tary self-communion is emphatic. It recalls
the ideal of friendship which lamblichus
states characterized the Pythagoreans; "for
they perpetually exhorted each other, not to
divulse the God within them. Hence all the

1 Complete Works, II., 197-198.

160 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

endeavour of their friendship, both in deeds
and words, was directed to a certain divine
mixture, to a union with divinity, and to a
communion with intellect and a divine soul." 1
And this self-communion is for the purpose
of catching a vision of eternal things in some
great moment. "In the great days, presenti
ments hover before me in the firmament. I
ought, then, to dedicate myself to them. I go
in that I may seize them, I go out that I may
seize them. I fear only that I may lose them
receding into the sky in which now they are
only a patch of brighter light. Then, though
I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk
with them and study their visions, lest I lose
my own. It would indeed give me a certain
household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this
spiritual astronomy or search for stars, and
come down to warm sympathies with you ; but
then I know well I shall mourn always the
vanishing of my mighty gods. It is true, next
week I shall have languid moods, when I can
well afford to occupy myself with foreign ob
jects; then I shall regret the lost literature of
your mind, and wish you were by my side
again. But if you come, perhaps you will fill
my mind only with new visions; not with

1 Life of Pythagoras, 170.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 161

yourself, but with your lustres, and I shall not
be able any more to converse with you. So I
will owe to my friends this evanescent inter
course. I will receive from them not what
they have, but what they are. They shall
give me that which properly they cannot give,
but which emanates from them. But they
shall not hold me by any relations less sub
tile and pure. We will meet as though we
met not, and part as though we parted not." 1
Acquiescence in the enjoyment of a moment
of mystic vision thus takes precedence in Em
erson over any desire to know the meaning of
simple, human fellowship.

Thus far Emerson has explained friendship
from his personal point of view and shown
the relations in which his friends stand to
him; but in his poem, Ettenne de la Boece, he
states his duty to his friend. It is not to fol
low him, but to direct his mind to the worship
of that inward Divine Presence to which his
own life is dedicated:

"If I could,

In severe or cordial mood,

Lead you rightly to my altar,

Where the wisest Muses falter,

And worship that world-warming spark

1 Complete Works, II., 215-216.

1 62 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Which dazzles me In midnight dark,
Equalizing small and large,
While the soul it doth surcharge,
Till the poor is wealthy grown,
And the hermit never alone —
The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done —
That were a man's and lover's part,
That were Freedom's whitest chart." 1

In this passage the characterization of the
"world-warming spark" identifies it with
the Over-Soul. Without that identification
the poem becomes unintelligible, especially the
couplet —

"The traveller and the road seem one
With the errand to be done."

But interpreted in keeping with the doctrin<
of the Over-Soul the poem shows that in such
a passage Emerson is expressing the Platon-
ist's belief that in the union of soul with the
One the knower and the thing known are one.
As Plotinus expresses the notion, using the fig
ure of light, he says of the mystic devotee that
"he will be ignorant of the manner in which
he sees it [the One] ; but the vision filling the

1 Complete Works, IX., 82.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 163

eyes with light, will prevent him from see
ing anything else, since the light itself will
be the object of his vision." l It is an experi
ence in which the traveler, or the soul of the
devotee, the errand, or the vision of the One,
and the road, or the light from the One, are
one.

In finding the foundation of love and
friendship in a mystical experience of such
absorbing interest, Emerson has forsaken
Plato, who does not ignore the personal,
human elements in love. Many are the
touches that let us into the human side of the
Dialogues and show the tenderness of Socrates
in his dealings with the favorite youths that
crowded about to hear him question. The
youthful Charmides and Lysis are types of
such Athenian lads in whose personal graces
and character the ugly-featured Socrates took
warm delight. Nor, indeed, is adherence to
the purely speculative side of the Dialogues
destructive of human affection. Such specu
lation is based on beauty and beauty, however
refined, in Plato is still a beauty that the soul
sees in the loved one. The English poet,
Spenser, has proved in his Calidore and Pas-
torella episode in The Faerie Queene how

1 On Suicide, 101-102.

164 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

sympathetic such a love as Plato taught can
be. But by forsaking this beauty for a more
metaphysical conception of unity Emerson
failed to realize the best that Plato can teach.

And yet Emerson gives a statement of the
theory of love which is based upon a passion
for beauty. In his essay, Love, he explains
"that high philosophy of Beauty which the
ancient writers delighted in ; for they said that
the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went
roaming up and down in quest of that other
world of its own out of which it came into
this, but was soon stupefied by the light of
the natural sun, and unable to see any other
objects than those of this world, which are
but shadows of real things. Therefore, the
Deity sends the glory of youth before the
soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful
bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial
good and fair; and the man beholding such
a person in the female sex runs to her and
finds the highest joy in contemplating the
form, movement and intelligence of this per
son, because it suggests to him the presence
of that which indeed is within the beauty, and
the cause of the beauty." l

This is an abstract of what Plutarch had

1 Complete Works, II., 181.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 165

said on love. In his dialogue, Of Love, he has
a discussion arising out of the resemblance
between the sun and the god of love. The
passage runs: "Nevertheless, we must not
therefore say they are all one. For neither
are the soul and body the same, but distinct;
as the sun is visible, but love is perceptible
only by sense. And if it might not be thought
too harsh a saying, a man might affirm that
the sun and love act contrary to one another.
For the sun diverts the understanding from
things intelligible to sensible objects, alluring
and fascinating the sight with the grace and
splendor of his rays, and persuading us to
search for other things, and even for truth
itself, within and about itself, and nowhere
else. And we appear to be passionately in
love with the sun, because, as Euripides says,

He always on the earth displays
The glory of his burning rays,

for want of our knowledge of another life,
or rather, through our forgetfulness of those
things which love calls to our remembrance.
For as, when we are newly awaked and come
into a bright and dazzling light, we forget
whatever appeared to the soul in our dreams;
so the sun seems to stupefy our recollection

i66 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and impoison our understanding, when we
change from the former life and enter this
world, so that in our pleasure and admiration
we forget all other considerations besides that
of the present life. Though there indeed are
the real substances proper for the contempla
tion of the soul; here, as in sleep, it embraces
only dreams, and gazes in admiration and
astonishment at what appears to it most beau
tiful and divine, while

Fallacious charming dreams about it fly —

it being persuaded that here everything is
goodly and highly to be prized, unless it hap
pens upon some divine and chaste love to be
its physician and preserver. This love, enter
ing through the body, becomes a guide to lead
the soul from the world below to truth and
the fields of truth, where full, pure, deceitless
beauty dwells ; and leading forth and guiding
upward those that now after a long time are
eager to embrace and live with such beauty,
it stands by them, like a friendly mystagogue
at the sacred ceremonies of initiation. But
no sooner is the soul sent from thence again,
but love is no longer able to make her ap
proaches of herself, but by the body. And,
therefore, as geometricians, when children are

LOVE AND BEAUTY 167

not able of themselves to apprehend the in
telligible idea of incorporeal and impassible
substance, form and set before their eyes the
tangible and visible imitation of spheres,
cubes, and dodecahedrons; in like manner
celestial love, having framed lovely mirrors
to represent lovely objects — things mortal and
passible to represent things divine, and sensi
ble objects to represent those perceptible only
to the eye of reason — shows them to us glitter
ing in the forms, colors, and shape of youth
in its prime, and first insensibly moves the
memory inflamed by the sight of these ob
jects." 1

Emerson then continues with his account:
"If, however, from too much conversing with
material objects, the soul was gross, and mis
placed its satisfaction in the body, it reaped
nothing but sorrow; body being unable to ful
fil the promise which beauty holds out; but
if, accepting the hint of these visions and sug
gestions which beauty makes to his mind, the
soul passes through the body and falls to
admire strokes of character, and the lovers
contemplate one another in their discourses
and their actions, then they pass to the true
palace of beauty, more and more inflame their

1 Morals, IV., 294-295.

i68 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

love of it, and by this love extinguishing the
base affection, as the sun puts out fire by
shining on the hearth, they become pure and
hallowed." 1

The basis of this is found in the continua
tion of Plutarch's account: "Whence it
comes to pass that some, through the stupidity
of their friends and acquaintances, endeavor
ing by force and against reason to extinguish
that flame, have enjoyed nothing of true bene
fit thereby, but only either disquieted them
selves with smoke and trouble, or else
rushing headlong into obscure and irregular
pleasures, obstinately cast themselves away.
But as many as by sober and modest ratiocina
tion have sincerely extinguished the raging
heat of the fire, and left behind only warm and
glowing heat in the soul — which causes no vio
lent earthquake, as it was once called, rous
ing the seed and causing a gliding of atoms
compressed by smoothness and titillation,
but a wonderful and engendering diffusion,
as in a blossoming and well-nourished plant,
which opens the pores of obedience and affec
tion — these, I say, in a short time passing by
the bodies of those whom they love, penetrate
more inwardly and fall to admire their man-

1 Complete Works, II., 181-182.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 169

ners and dispositions; and calling off their
eyes from the body, they converse together
and contemplate one another in their dis
courses and in their actions, provided there
be but the least scrip or appearance of beauty
in the understanding. If not, they let them
go, and turn their affections upon others, like
bees that will not fasten upon many plants and
flowers, because they cannot gather honey
from them. But where they find any foot
step, any emanation, any resemblance of a
divinity, ravished with delight and admira
tion as they recall it to memory, they attract
it to themselves, and are revived by striving
to attain to what is truly amiable, happy and
beloved by all mankind.

". . . This same subtle invention of
love-sophistry in generous and noble souls
causes a repercussion of the memory from ob
jects that here appear and are called beauti
ful, to the beauty really divine, truly amiable
and happy, and by all admired. But most
people pursuing and taking hold of the fan
cied image of this beauty in boys and women,
as it were seen in a mirror, reap nothing more
assured and certain than a little pleasure
mixed with pain. . . . But a generous
and modest lover observes another method;

170 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

for his contemplations reflect only on that
beauty which is divine and perceptible by
the understanding; but lighting upon the
beauty of a visible body, and making use of
it as a kind of organ of the memory, he em
braces and loves, and by conversation aug
menting his joy and satisfaction still more
and more inflames his understanding. But
neither do these lovers conversing with bodies
rest satisfied in this world with a desire
and admiration of this same light. . . .
Whereas a lover truly chaste and amorous,
being got to the true mansion of beauty, and
there conversing with it as much as it is law
ful for him to do, mounted upon wings of
chaste desire, becomes pure and hallowed;
and being initiated into sacred orders, con
tinues dancing and sporting about this Deity,
till returning again to the meadows of the
Moon and Venus, and there laid asleep, he
becomes ready for a new nativity." 1

Emerson then concludes: "By conversa
tion with that which is in itself excellent,
magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes
to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a
quicker apprehension of them. Then he
passes from loving them in one to loving

1 Morals, IV., 295-296, 297-298.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 171

them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul
the only door through which he enters to the
society of all true and pure souls. In the
particular society of his mate he attains a
clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her
beauty has contracted from this world, and
is able to point it out, and this with mutual
joy that they are able, without offence, to in
dicate blemishes and hindrances in each
other, and give to each all help and comfort
in curing the same. And beholding in many
souls the traits of divine beauty, and separat
ing in each soul that which is divine from
the taint which it has contracted in the world,
the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the
love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps
on this ladder of created souls." l

This portion of his abstract is not from
Plutarch. Plutarch had brought his discus
sion to a point "too high for the discourse
which we have proposed to ourselves." Em
erson thus turns to Plato. In his Banquet
Plato explains: "Now to go, or to be led
by another, along the right way of Love, is
this: beginning from those beauties of lower
rank, to proceed in a continual ascent, all
the way proposing this highest beauty as the

1 Complete Works, II., 182-183.

172 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

end ; and using the rest but as so many steps
in the ascent; to proceed from one to two,
from two to all beauteous bodies ; from
the beauty of bodies to that of souls ; from the
beauty of souls to that of arts ; from the beauty
of arts to that of discipline, until at length
from the disciplines he arrives at that disci
pline which is the discipline of no other
thing than of that supreme beauty; and thus
finally attains to know what is the beautiful
itself." *

"But this dream of love," observes Emer
son, "though beautiful, is only one scene in
our play." 2 It is not a theory that he applied
to his own experience. It merely strength
ened his belief that love as it grows older
must grow more impersonal. The affections
and the personal relations must give way to
this. "The soul may be trusted to the end.
That which is so beautiful and attractive as
these relations, must be succeeded and sup
planted only by what is more beautiful, and
so on forever." 3

The presence of the same theory of the
beautiful is felt in Emerson's essay on Beauty.

1 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, III.,

514.

2 Complete Works, II., 183.

3 Ibid., II, 188.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 173

"Thus there is a climbing scale of culture,
from the first agreeable sensation which a
sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the
eye, up through fair outlines and details of
the landscape, features of the human face and
form, signs and tokens of thought and char
acter in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries
of the intellect. Wherever we begin, thither
our steps tend: an ascent from the joy of a
horse in his trappings, up to the perception
of Newton that the globe on which we ride is
only a larger apple falling from a larger tree;
up to the perception of Plato that globe and
universe are rude and early expressions of an
all-dissolving Unity — the first stair on the
scale to the temple of the Mind." l

This is a reworking from the Neo-Platonic
standpoint of the dialectic of beauty as Plato
had stated it in his Banquet. Plato held to
a way by which the soul mounts from the con
templation of the beauty of one object to the
spiritual vision of absolute beauty. Plotinus,
in his treatment of beauty, extends the path
until it reaches the absolute One itself. "Just
as those who penetrate into the holy retreats
of sacred mysteries," he explains, "are first
purified, and then divest themselves of their

1 Complete Works, VL, 306.

174 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

garments, until someone, by such a process,
having dismissed everything foreign from the
God, by himself alone, beholds the solitary
principle of the universe, sincere, simple, and
pure, from which all things depend, and to
whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all
intelligent natures are directed, as the proper
cause of being, life, and intelligence." 1

Yet Emerson shows more than a formal
recognition of the doctrine of beauty as held
by the Platonists. He was a true lover of
beauty. His Ode to Beauty shows him not
unworthy of a place with Keats, Milton and
Spenser. But it is interesting to note that it
is the aesthetic theory of Neo-Platonic writers
rather than of Plato that influences his work.
He felt without a doubt the difference be
tween the speculations of Plotinus and of
Proclus on beauty from those of Plato. Plato
had very little to say of material beauty, but
Plotinus developed an aesthetic theory that did
full justice to it, even though his mysticism
tended to make him reject the claims of things
of the sensuous world; Proclus followed in
his footsteps. Consequently, in these two
writers Emerson found a body of theory ready

1 An Essay on the Beautiful, 30-31.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 175

made and he fashioned his own theories ac
cordingly.

It was the intellectual quality of beauty
that held Emerson's attention. "Beauty," he
says, "is the form under which the intellect
prefers to study the world." 1 Thus in his
final analysis of beauty he holds that "the new
virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is
a certain cosmical quality, or a power to sug
gest relation to the whole world, and so lift
the object out of a pitiful individuality.
Every natural feature — sea, sky, rainbow,
flowers, musical tone — has in it somewhat
which is not private, but universal, speaks of
that central benefit which is the soul of nature,
and thereby is beautiful. And in chosen men
and women I find somewhat in form, speech
and manners, which is not of their person and
family, but of a human, catholic and spiritual
character, and we love them as the sky. They
have a largeness of suggestion, their face and
manners carry a certain grandeur, like time
and justice." a

His poem, Each and All, turns upon this
conception :

1 Complete Works, VI., 287.

2 Ibid., VI., 303-304.

176 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

"All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone." l

He works out the sentiment by explaining
how a thing of beauty loses its charm when
taken from its natural environment and in
stances the mute silence of the bird when
brought home from the woodland, the lost
beauty of the shells when removed from the
beach, and the faded charm of the maiden
when she becomes the lover's wife. Realiz
ing these disappointments, he exclaims,

" 'I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth.' " 2

But the true insight came when he looked
about him at the beauty of the place.

"As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,

1 Ibid., IX., 4.

2 Complete Works, IX., 5.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 177

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird —

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole." l

This conception of beauty is that which
Proclus teaches. In his Commentaries on
the Timceus of Plato he develops the idea at
length. "What, then, someone may say, are
not the sun and moon and each of the stars
beautiful? But how is this possible? For
each of these is assimilated to a partial ani
mal. To this we reply, that each of these is
beautiful when surveyed in conjunction with
the whole and co-arranged with the whole ;
just as the eye and the chin are beautiful, in
conjunction with the whole face, and while
in the whole; but surveyed by themselves
apart from the face, do not exhibit the beauty
which is adapted to them. For in subsisting
as a part and not as a whole, each when essen
tially divulsed from the whole, suffers a
diminution of its own proper beauty. The
perfect, therefore, and the beautiful are pres
ent with these which are parts, on account of
the whole." 2

&, IX., 5-6.
2 I, 356.

178 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

To the same idea of beauty Emerson refers
in his definition of the comic. This quality
in objects arises when the relation of the ob
ject to the whole is not observed, but the in
dividual is purposely held up as a contrast to
the whole. "Man through his access to
Reason," Emerson maintains, "is capable of
the perception of a whole and a part. Reason
is the whole and whatsoever is not this is a
part. The whole of Nature is agreeable to
the whole of thought, or to the Reason; but
separate any part of Nature and attempt to
look at it as a whole by itself, and the feeling
of the ridiculous begins." 1

By virtue of this cosmical quality of beauty
each object in the universe becomes symboli
cal, or representative of the whole. Such is
the statement that satisfies the intellect; but in
the theory there is an imaginative element
which Emerson develops to the full. The
transformation of the individual into a thing
of universal relationship is a stroke of the
imagination. "There are no days in life,"
he confesses, "so memorable as those which
vibrated to some stroke of the imagination." 2
Beauty thus takes on a fugitive nature. "This

1 Complete Works, VIII., 158.
«., VI., 304.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 179

is the reason," he explains, "why beauty is
still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet
possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus
says, 'It swims on the light of forms.' It is
properly not in the form, but in the mind. It
instantly deserts possession, and flies to an ob
ject in the horizon." 1

Here the sentiment is openly ascribed to
Proclus, whose account of beauty in his On
the Theology of Plato was a marked passage
in Emerson's own copy. There Proclus had
written: "And because it [beauty] bounds
this triad, and covers as with a veil the ineffa
ble union of the gods, swims as it were on
the light of forms, causes intelligible light to
shine forth and announces the occult nature
of goodness, it is denominated splendid, lucid
and manifest." 2

With an eye keen for the sentence that
states a truth chiming in with his own thought
Emerson seizes the statement of Proclus and
makes it the text of his Ode to Beauty, which
may be regarded as the companion piece of
Each and AIL In the Ode Emerson sings of
the enthralling attraction of a beauty which
always escapes his grasp, eternal fugitive that

1 Ibid., VI., 303.

2 I., 78.

180 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

it is. Though he knows not how it came
about, he was a thrall of beauty from the first
time he ever saw her.

"Lavish, lavish promiser,
Nigh persuading gods to err!
Guest of million painted forms,
Which in turns thy glory warms !
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn's cup, the rain drop's arc,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,
The shining pebble of the pond,
Thou inscribest with a bond,
In thy momentary play,
Would bankrupt nature to repay.

• • • •

"Thee gliding through the sea of form,
Like the lightning through the storm,
Somewhat not to be possessed,
Somewhat not to be caressed,
No feet so fleet could ever find,
No perfect form could ever bind.
Thou eternal fugitive,
Hovering over all that live,
Quick and skilful to inspire
Sweet, extravagant desire,
Starry space and lily-bell
Filling with thy roseate smell,

LOVE AND BEAUTY 181

Will not give the lips to taste
Of the nectar which thou hast." l

Emerson also recognizes the spiritual side
of beauty which he had found stated in the
Platonists. "The presence of a higher,
namely, of the spiritual element is essential
to its perfection. The high and divine
beauty which can be loved without effemi
nacy, is that which is found in combination
with the human will. Beauty is the mark
God sets upon Virtue. Every natural action
is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent,
and causes the place and the bystanders to
shine." 2

Plutarch, in his dialogue, Of Love, has
made one of his characters observe, "But some
say that beauty is the flower of virtue." 3
Emerson had noted the sentiment, for he re
peats it in his essay, Love, when he says,
"The ancients called beauty the flowering of
virtue." 4

But Emerson develops the idea in a charac
teristic way. Not only is beauty the outward

1 Complete Works, IX., 87-90.

2 Ibid., I., 19-20.

8 Morals, IV., 300.

4 Complete Works, II., 179.

182 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

index in man of spiritual excellence, as Pla-
tonism taught, but nature herself envelops the
beautiful act with the beauty of her own en
vironment. Thus Emerson asks, "When a
noble act is done — perchance in a scene of
great natural beauty; when Leonidas and his
three hundred martyrs consume one day in
dying, and the sun and moon come each and
look at them once in the steep defile of
Thermopylae; when Arnold Winkelried, in
the high Alps, under the shadow of the ava
lanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian
spears to break the line for his comrades —
are not these heroes entitled to add the
beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed?
. . . Ever does natural beauty steal in like
air, and envelope great actions." 1

As a final consideration of the meaning of
beauty Emerson maintains with the Platonists
the unity of beauty, truth and goodness.
They form a trinity in which each is but a
phase of the divine presence. Thus he sums
up his account of beauty with the words:
"Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense,
is one expression for the universe. God is
the all-fair. Truth and goodness, and beauty,

1 Complete Works, 1., 20-21.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 183

are but different faces of the same All." *
Such identification is characteristic of
Proclus's manner of treating triads and
monads. Gathering up what Plato had said
of the relation of beauty and goodness and
wisdom, he thus philosophizes: "But what
sufficient argument of division does Socrates
afTord us in the Phaedrus, concerning these in
telligible triads? And how from what is
delivered by him may we recur to the concep
tion of the hypostasis of the most principal
gods? Socrates, therefore, in that dialogue,
being inspired by the nymphs celebrates every
thing divine as beautiful, wise and good, and
says that by these the soul is nourished. But
if everything divine is a thing of this kind,
this is the case with the intelligible by a much
greater priority. And all these are every
where, but in the first triad, the good princi
pally subsists; in the second the wise; and in
the third the beautiful. For in this there is
the most beautiful of intelligibles. But in
the second triad truth and the first intelligence
subsist." a

Beauty is of such importance to Emerson
that he readily adopts the Pythagorean notion

1 Ibid., 24.

2 On the Theology of Plato, I., 204.

1 84 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

of the world as *oo-/«>« m h|s discussion of
the uses of nature. According to Plutarch,
"Pythagoras was the first philosopher that
gave the name of ^oV/to? to the world from
the order and beauty of it; for so the word
signifies." * Following such a definition
Emerson finds in the love of natural objects
one of the uses, though not the final use, in
which nature serves man. Thus he opens the
discussion of beauty in Nature with the state
ment — "The ancient Greeks called the world
/coVos, beauty. Such is the constitution of
all things, or such the plastic power of the
human eye, that the primary forms as the sky,
the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a
delight in and for themselves; a pleasure aris
ing from outline, color, motion and group-
ing."2

Emerson's reading in the Platonists, then,
was a great stimulus to his appreciation of
beauty. Their conception of a gradation of
beauty provided him with a critical scheme
to value beauty in its primary manifestation
and up through the moral and intellectual
worlds into the realm of pure imagination.
The teaching of Proclus of the cosmical

1 Morals, III., 132.

2 Complete Works, I., 15.

LOVE AND BEAUTY 185

nature of beauty, by which the individual is
related to the universal scheme of things, ap
pealed most strongly to Emerson. It satisfied
a mind that loved to lose itself in the thought
of universals and it enabled him to appreciate
the fugitive character of beauty arising out of
its cosmical quality. Beauty is thus not
identified with form, symmetry, or color, but
is a liveliness quite distinct from these. In
catching this fascinating quality of beauty
Emerson gets nearer to the spirit of Platonism
than when he develops his ideal of love.

CHAPTER V

ART

THE question of art is closely associated
in Emerson with the larger question of
nature. In his introduction to Nature he
includes the term art under his main topic.
"Nature, in the common sense," so his defini
tion runs, "refers to essences unchanged by
man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art
is applied to the mixture of his will with the
same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue,
a picture. But his operations taken together
are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking,
patching and washing, that in an impression
so grand as that of the world on the human
mind, they do not vary the result." * Later
in life, he attended to this matter of art with a
fullness of treatment in keeping with the im
portance of the subject; but throughout his
art criticism there is a close connection be
tween his theories of nature and those of art.
Art, so Emerson conceives its general im-

1 Complete Works, L, 5.

1 86

ART 187

port, is one way in which the Universal Mind
reveals itself in the activities of the individual.
"I hasten to state," his account runs, "the
principle which prescribes, through different
means, its firm law to the useful and the
beautiful arts. The law is this. The uni
versal soul is the alone creator of the useful
and the beautiful; therefore, to make any
thing useful or beautiful, the individual must
be submitted to the universal mind." 1 In
both the useful and the fine arts, nature is a
representative of the universal mind. "In
the first place," he proceeds, "let us consider
this in reference to the useful arts. Here the
omnipotent agent is Nature; all human acts
are satellites to her orb. Nature is the rep
resentative of the universal mind, and the law
becomes this — that Art must be a complement
to Nature, strictly subsidiary." 2 In apply
ing the idea to the fine arts he adds, "Nature
paints the best part of the picture, carves the
best part of the statue, builds the best part of
the house, and speaks the best part of the
oration." 3 As regards the spiritual side of
a work of art, "the parts must be subordinate

1 Ibid., VII., 40.

2 Ibid.

., 47.

188 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

to Ideal Nature, and everything individual
abstracted, so that it shall be the production
of the universal soul." 1 He thus concludes:
"There is but one Reason. The mind that
made the world is not one mind, but the mind.
And every work of art is a more or less pure
manifestation of the same." 2

The doctrine of Universal Mind is writ
large on such a theory: and that doctrine Em
erson had appropriated from Platonism.
The subserviency of nature to this mind, how
ever, and the part that it and the universal
mind play in human art arose out of a sug
gestion which Emerson found in Cudworth's
essay on plastic nature which he indexed
under "Art" in his own copy of The True
Intellectual System of the Universe. This
plastic nature, Cudworth explains, is "to be
conceived as art acting not from without and
at a distance, but immediately upon the thing
itself which is formed by it." 3 But this
plastic nature in its operations is subordinate
to the divine mind. Accordingly he states:
"Nature is not the Deity itself, but a thing
very remote from it, and far below it, so

1 Ibid., 48.

2 Ibid., 50-51.

8 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 235.

ART 189

neither is it the divine art, as it is in itself
pure and abstract, but concrete and embodied
only; for the divine art considered in itself is
nothing but knowledge, understanding, or
wisdom in the mind of God." 1 "Nature is
not master of that consummate art and wis
dom, according to which it acts, but only a
servant to it, and a drudging executioner of
the dictates of it." 2 Quoting Plotinus, from
whom the theory is drawn, he says, "That
which is called nature is the offspring of a
higher soul, which hath a more powerful life
in it." 3 Now by substituting his own name
for God, namely, Universal Mind, Emerson
was able to use Cudworth's account as the
basis of his essay, Art.

Further evidence of his dependence upon
Cudworth is to be found in his preliminary
definition of art. "Relatively to themselves,"
he says, "the bee, the bird, the beaver, have
no art; for what they do they do instinctively;
but relatively to the Supreme Being, they
have. And the same is true of all uncon
scious action: relatively to the doer, it is in
stinct; relatively to the First Cause, it is Art.

id., I, 237-238.
2 Ibid., I., 239.
*Ibid., I., 256.

190 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

In this sense, recognizing the Spirit which in
forms Nature, Plato rightly said, 'Those
things, which are said to be done by Nature
are indeed done by Divine Art.' Art, uni
versally, is the spirit creative. It was defined
by Aristotle, 'The reason of the thing, with
out the matter.' " 1

In Cudworth's account both these quota
tions are found and in Emerson's copy both
are marked. "Wherefore when art is said to
imitate nature," writes Cudworth, "the mean
ing thereof is, that imperfect human art imi
tates that perfect art of nature, which is
really no other than the divine art itself; as
before Aristotle, Plato had declared in his
Sophist, in these words: *. . . Those
things which are said to be done by Nature,
are indeed done by divine art.' " 2 "Art is
defined by Aristotle to be '. . . the rea
son of the thing without matter.' " 3 It is
also to be recalled that the motto from Plo-
tinus prefixed to the first edition of Nature
came from this portion of Cudworth where
plastic nature is discussed.

So imbued is Emerson with the doctrine of

1 Complete Works, VII., 39.

2 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, L, 237.

3 Ibid., L, 238.

ART 191

Universal Mind as the creator in all art that
he uses it to explain certain phenomena in
aesthetics. The pleasure aroused by a work
of art seems to arise from our recognizing in
it the mind that formed nature again in active
operation.1 The same principle also explains
the moral grandeur of works of art; they
come from absolute mind whose nature is
goodness as well as truth.2 The analogies ex
isting in all arts likewise find an explanation
in the reappearance of one mind working to
many temporal ends in many materials.3
The necessity, too, reigning in the world of
art is one of the possible forms in the Divine
mind discovered and executed by the artist.4

It has already been pointed out how the
doctrine of Universal Mind changes into that
of the Over-Soul. Both mean the same thing
in Emerson. In the Over-Soul he lays em
phasis upon the relation of the divine power
to the human soul ; the former stands over the
latter and guides its activities, just as in the
scheme of the Platonists the One is above In
tellect and Intellect above Soul, each princi-

1 Complete Works, VII., 51.

2 Ibid.
*Ibid., 52.

54.

Of THE

UNIVERSITY

Of

192 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

pie drawing its life from that immediately
above it in power. By applying this concep
tion to the relation of the divine mind to the
artist Emerson explains the manner of crea
tion in art:

"Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone,
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye.

These temples grew as grows the grass;

Art might obey, but not surpass.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned ;

And the same power that reared the shrine

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within." 1

* Ibid., IX., 7-&

ART 193

Among the arts poetry receives the fullest
share of Emerson's attention. In the ideal
poet he found the complete man whose ad
vent he was ever expecting; in him he looked
to find the embodiment under the form of
beauty of all that he had come to learn con
cerning nature and the soul : in fact the poet
and the philosopher were to be one.

At first sight this fusion of poetry and phi
losophy seems to preclude the influence of
Platonism as an important factor in such a
result. Plato had banished the poets from
his commonwealth and had analyzed their art
as an imitation of an imitation and not an
imitation of reality. He had thus come to
place the poet just a little above a mechanic
or farmer. But Plotinus had corrected the
error. "If one condemns the arts," he says,
"because they create by way of imitation of
nature, first we must observe that natural
things themselves are an imitation of some
thing further [viz., of underlying reasons or
ideas], and next we must bear in mind that
the arts do not simply imitate the visible, but
go back to the reasons from which nature
comes; and, further, that they create much
out of themselves, and add to that which is

194 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

defective, as being themselves in possession of
beauty; since Pheidias did not create his Zeus
after any perceived pattern, but made him
such as he would be if Zeus deigned to appear
to mortal eyes." *

Through such reasoning Plotinus brought
Platonism back to a fuller realization of the
plastic character of its own thought. Plato
had appealed to this Greek way of looking
at things of the spirit in his account of crea
tion; in his Timceus the Creator sets about his
work as an artist and fashions the world after
an eternal pattern of ideal or intellectual
beauty; hence the dependence of this world
of sense as an image on the world of true in
telligible substance. But he had never ap
plied the idea to art. Plotinus, however, did.
He turned the tide of imitation into a re
sourceful stream of pure creation. Art, then,
as a creative idea in the soul of the artist had
a beauty surpassing that of the works pro
ceeding from it; and just as the Creator in
the Timceus was superior to his work, or the
universe, so the human artist rises above his
work and lives in an essentially ideal world of
his own.

1 Quoted in Bernard Bosanquet, A History of ^Esthetic,
113-114-

ART 195

In Emerson this conception of art is found
in snatches of aesthetic theory. "The beauty
of nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not
for barren contemplation, but for the new cre
ation." 1 "The creation of beauty is Art." 2
"Thus is Art a nature passed through the alem
bic of man. Thus in art does Nature work
through the will of a man filled with the
beauty of her first works." 3 "The soul cre
ated the arts wherever they have flourished.
It was in his own mind that the artist sought
his model." 4 York Minster and St. Peter's
are imitations, "faint copies of an invisible
archtype." 5 In such statements art is con
ceived as a creative power in the artist, and
not a mere imitation lacking reality.

But it was Proclus that showed Emerson
how the breach between poetry and philoso
phy opened by Plato's criticism could be
closed. Although Plotinus had justified the
artist as a creative agent, he had not attempted
to identify him with the philosopher. But
this Proclus did in an account of poetry which
contains, in the words of Thomas Taylor, who

1 Complete Works, I., 23.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 24.
*Ibid., II., S2.

rf., I., 68.

196 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

includes the passage in his notes to Plato's
Republic, "a most accurate and scientific di
vision of poetry, and perfectly reconciles the
prince of philosophers with the first of
poets." * This reconciliation is brought about
by summarily paralleling the activities of the
soul with the functions of the various kinds of
poetry.

"There are three lives in the soul," says
Proclus, "of which the best and most perfect
is that according to which it is conjoined with
the Gods, and lives a life most allied, and
through the highest similitude united to them ;
no longer subsisting from itself, but from
them, running under its own intellect, exciting
the ineffable impressions of the one which it
contains, and connecting like with like, its own
light with that of the Gods, and that which is
most uniform in its own essence and life, with
the one which is above all essence and life.
That which is second to this in dignity and
power, has a middle arrangement in the mid
dle of the soul, according to which indeed it
is converted to itself, descending from a di
vinely inspired life; and placing intellect and
science as the principles of its energy, it

1 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, I.,
438, note.

ART 197

evolves the multitude of its reasons, surveys
the all-various mutations of forms, collects
into sameness intellect, and that which is the
object of intellect, and expresses in images an
intellectual and intelligible essence. The
third life of the soul is that which accords
with its inferior powers, and energizes to
gether with them, employing phantasies and
irrational senses, and being entirely filled with
things of a subordinate nature.

"As there are therefore these three forms of
life in souls, the poetical division also super-
nally proceeds together with the multiform
lives of the soul, and is diversified into first,
middle, and last genera of energy. For, of
poetry also, one kind has the highest subsist
ence, is full of divine goods, and establishes
the soul in the causes themselves of things, ac
cording to a certain ineffable union, leading
that which is filled, into sameness with its re
plenishing source; the former immaterially
subjecting itself to illumination, but the latter
being excited to a communication of light;
thus according to the Oracle, 'perfecting
works, by mingling the rivers of incorruptible
fire.' It also produces one divine bond and a
unifying mixture of that which is partici
pated and the participant, establishing the

198 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

whole of that which is subordinate in that
which is more excellent, and preparing that
which is more divine alone to energize, the in
ferior nature being withdrawn, and conceal
ing its own idiom in that which is superior.
This then, in short, is a mania better than tem
perance, and is distinguished by a divine char
acteristic. And as every different kind of
poetry subsists according to a different
hyparxis, or summit of divine essence, so this
fills the soul energizing from divine inspira
tion, with symmetry; and hence it adorns its
last energies with measures and rhythms. As
therefore we say that prophetic fury subsists
according to truth, and the amatory accord
ing to beauty, in the like manner, we say, that
the poetic mania is defined according to divine
symmetry.

"The second kind of poetry which is subor
dinate to the first and divinely inspired
species, and which has a middle subsistence in
the soul, is allotted its essence according to a
scientific and intellectual habit. Hence it
knows the essence of things and loves to con
template beautiful works and reasonings, and
leads forth everything into a measured and
rhythmical interpretation. For you will find
many progeny of good poets to be of this kind,

ART 199

emulous of those that are truly wise, full of
admonition, the best counsels, and intellectual
symmetry. It likewise extends the commu
nication of prudence and every other virtue to
those of a naturally good disposition, and af
fords a reminiscence of the periods of the soul,
of its eternal reasons, and various powers.

"The third species of poetry subsequent to
these, is mingled with opinions and phan
tasies, receives its completion through imita
tion, and is said to be, and is nothing else than
imitative poetry. At one time, it alone uses
assimilation, and at another time defends ap
parent and not real assimilation. It consid
erably raises very moderate passions, aston
ishes the hearers; together with appropriate
appellations and wrords, mutations of har
monies and varieties of rhythms, changes the
dispositions of souls; and indicates the nature
of things not such as they are, but such as they
appear to the many; being a certain adum
bration, and not an accurate knowledge of
things. It also establishes as its end the de
light of the hearers; and particularly looks to
the passive part of the soul, which is naturally
adapted to rejoice and be affected. But of
this species of poetry, as we have said, one
division is assimilative, which is extended to

200 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

rectitude of imitation, but the other is phan-
tastic, and affords apparent imitation alone." *

Proclus then shows that Plato mentions
these kinds of poetry and that Homer was
skilled in them all, especially the enthusiastic
variety. He concludes by stating that the
reason why Plato was so severe on Homer was
that in Plato's time poetry was overestimated
and philosophy undervalued.2 In Proclus,
then, is found the highest justification of
poetry and its intimate alliance with the prin
ciples of Platonism. Corresponding to the
three principles are three kinds of poetry.

Emerson had marked this dissertation of
Proclus' in his own copy. It gave an account
of poetry quite in keeping with his sentiments.
And although he does not follow Proclus in
the details of his comparison, Emerson is one
with him in correlating the method of poetry
with that of philosophy.

Emerson places the poet on an equal with
the man of action and the man of knowledge.
The three form a trinity of persons distinct yet
equal in power. "For the Universe," he
writes, "has three children, born at one time,

1 Quoted in The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas
Taylor, I., 438, note.

2 Ibid., note, 439 et sq.

ART 201

which reappear under different names in
every system of thought, whether they be
called cause, operation and effect; or, more
poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theo
logically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son;
but which we will call here the Knower,
the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respec
tively for the love of truth, for the love of
good, and for the love of beauty. These three
are equal. Each is that which he is, essen
tially, so that he cannot be surmounted or
analyzed, and each of these three has the
power of the others latent in him and his own,
patent." 1

This basic principle which defines the re
lation of the poet to a general scheme of things
is an amplification of the familiar Platonic
doctrine of the trinity of the beautiful, the
good, and the true. Emerson's treatment of it
here is reminiscent of a discussion in Cud-
worth. In his treatment of the pagan deities
Cudworth points out how one group of their
gods makes up "one orderly and harmonious
system of the whole ; one of those gods ruling
only in the heavens, another in the sea, and an
other in the earth and hell ; one being the god
or goddess of learning and wisdom, another of

1 Complete Works, III., 6-7.

202 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

speech and eloquence, another of justice and
political order." 1 The reference in the first
group is to Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who
Cudworth adds, "were not three really dis
tinct substantial beings, but only so many sev
eral names for one supreme God." 2 From
the second group in Cudworth, Emerson got
his series, the Knower, the Sayer, and the
Doer. And the identification of the three
with the primary conception of love of truth,
love of beauty, and love of good, shows how
the principles of Platonism were the guiding
factors in Emerson's thinking.

To justify the poet as the representative
sayer, or namer of things, Emerson explains
the poet's insight into the symbolical nature of
the universe. The materials of his craft are
symbols. "Nature offers all her creatures to
him as a picture language. Being used as a
type, a second wonderful value appears in the
object, far better than its old value; as the
carpenter's stretched cord, if you hold your
ear close enough, is musical in the breeze.
'Things more excellent than every image,'
says Jamblichus, 'are expressed through
images.' Things admit of being used as sym-

1 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 364.
»/&«., II, 223.

ART 203

bols because nature is a symbol, in the whole,
and in every part." 1

This conception of the poet is a growth out
of Emerson's familiar way of looking at na
ture as a symbol, which truth he had learned
in his study of Platonism. The quotation of
lamblichus, too, points to the character of the
idea; it is a sentiment which lamblichus uses
in explaining the true nature of a sacred in
stitution, which he says "imitates both the in
telligible and celestial order of the Gods; and
contains the eternal measures of beings, and
those admirable signatures which are sent
hither from the Demiurgus and father of
wholes, by which things of an ineffable nature
are unfolded into light through arcane sym
bols, things formless are vanquished by forms,
things more excellent than every image are ex
pressed through images. . * ." 2

The material of the poet's craft being sym
bols, the poet is the man who knows how to
articulate them. All men, whether con
sciously or not, love symbols and use them but
"the poet, by an ulterior intellectual percep
tion, gives them a power which makes their old
use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into

1 Complete Works, III., 13.

2 On the Mysteries, 79-80.

204 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

every dumb and inanimate object. He per
ceives the independence of the thought on the
symbol, the stability of the thought, the acci-
dency and the f ugacity of the symbol. As the
eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the
earth, so the poet turns the world to, glass, and
shows us all things in their right series and
procession. For through that better percep
tion he stands one step nearer to things, and
sees the flowing or metamorphosis ; perceives
that thought is multiform; that within the
form of every creature is a force impelling it
to ascend into a higher form; and following
with his eyes the life, uses the forms which ex
press that life, and so his speech flows with the
flowing of nature. . . . He uses forms
according to the life and not according to the
form. This is true science. ... By vir
tue of this science the poet is the Namer or
Language-maker, naming things sometimes
after their appearance, sometimes after their
essence, and giving to every one its own name
and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intel
lect, which delights in detachment or bound
ary." l

In such a theory Platonism plays its part by
giving the idea of flux, which Emerson inter-

1 Complete Works, III., 20-21.

ART 205

prets in characteristic wise as an ascension.
His theory also recalls Plato's discussion of
language in the Gratylus. Here is found the
mention of an original legislator who is rep
resented as naming things, some according to
the flux of things, and others according to
stability. The majority of words seem to in
dicate flux, says Plato, but there are other
names "from which," he adds, "one would
imagine, that the founder of names did not in
dicate things going on and borne along, but
such as have an abiding." 1 And finally in
identifying poetry with true science, Emer
son presents an ideal of the poet very like that
ideal which Porphyry says Plotinus repre
sented. "Plotinus likewise applied himself,"
Porphyry writes, "to the canons concerning the
stars, but not according to a very mathemat
ical mode. That is, we may presume, he very
little regarded the calculation of eclipses, or
measuring the distance of the sun and moon
from the earth, or determining the magni
tudes and velocities of the planets. For he
considered employments of this kind, as more
the province of the mathematician, than of the
profound and intellectual philosopher. The
mathematical sciences are indeed the proper

1 Bohn translation, III., 388.

206 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

means of acquiring wisdom, but they ought
never to be considered as its end. They are
the bridge, as it were, between sense and in
tellect, by which we may safely pass through
the night of oblivion, over the dark and
stormy ocean of matter, to the lucid regions
of the intelligible world. And he who is de
sirous of returning to his true country, will
speedily pass over this bridge without making
any needless delays in his passage." 1

Such a conception agrees well with Emer
son's encomium of the poet. "The poet alone
knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and
animation, for he does not stop at these facts,
but employs them as signs. He knows why
the plain or meadow of space was strown with
flowers we call suns and moons and stars ; why
the great deep is adorned with animals, with
men, and gods ; for in every word he speaks he
rides on them as the horses of thought." 2

In referring to Lyncaeus to explain the
acuteness of the poet's spiritual vision Emer
son shows indebtedness to Plotinus. In ex
plaining the relation of each thing in the in
telligible world to the whole Plotinus writes :

1 Select Works, Introduction, liii-liv. Cf. Complete Works,
III., 298, note to p. 21.

2 Complete Works, III., 21.

ART 207

"For it appears indeed as a part; but by him
whose sight is acute, it will be seen as a whole ;
viz., by him whose sight resembles that which
Lynceus is said to have possessed, and which
penetrated the interior parts of the earth; the
fable obscurely indicating the acuteness of the
vision of supernal eyes." 1 Recollecting this
passage, which he had marked in his own
copy, Emerson writes: "As the eyes of
Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth,
so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows
us all things in their right series and pro

cession."

This application to the poet of what the
Platonists had said about the philosopher is
illustrated in Emerson's further appropri
ations from his reading. "Our best definition
of poetry," he writes, "is one of the oldest
sentences, and claims to come down to us from
the Chaldean Zoroaster, who wrote it thus:
Toets are standing transporters, whose em
ployment consist in speaking to the Father
and to matter; in producing apparent imita
tions of unapparent natures, and inscribing
things unapparent in the apparent fabrica
tion of the world ;' in other words, the world

1 Select Works, Introduction, Ixxxi.

2 Complete Works, III., 20.

208 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

exists for thought; it is to make appear things
which hide; mountains, crystals, animals, are
seen : that which makes them is not seen : these,
then, are 'apparent copies of unapparent na
tures.'

This quotation, which Emerson includes in
a list of generalizations that "all have a kind
of filial retrospect to Plato and the Greeks," 2
is from Taylor's Collection of Chaldean
Oracles, where connection of the oracle with
the poets is in no wise intimated. In the
original form it reads: "Rulers who under
stand the intelligible works of the Father.
These he spreads like a veil over sensible
works and bodies. They are standing trans
porters, whose employment consists in speak
ing to the Father and to matter; in producing
apparent imitations of unapparent natures;
and in inscribing things unapparent in the ap
parent fabrication of the world." 3

Poetry and philosophy, then, are one; but
with a difference. "Whilst the poet ani
mates nature with his own thoughts," Emerson
observes in distinguishing them, "he differs

1 Ibid., VIII., 19.

a/Md., V., 241.

8 Classical Journal, XVII., 250.

ART 209

from the philosopher only herein, that the one
proposes Beauty as his main end; the other
Truth. . . . The true philosopher and
the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is
truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim
of both." l

In support of such a theory Emerson ap
peals to the identity in charm of a definition
in philosophy and a work of art, such as
Sophocles' Antigone.2 "I will not now con
sider," he writes, "how much this makes the
charm of algebra and the mathematics, which
also have their tropes, but it is felt in every
definition: as ... when Plato defines a
line to be a flowing point; or figure to be a
bound of solid. . . . When Socrates, in
Charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its
maladies by certain incantations, and that
these incantations are beautiful reasons, from
which temperance is generated in souls; when
Plato calls the world an animal, and Timaeus
affirms that the plants also are animals; or
affirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing
with his root, which is his head, upward;
. . . when Orpheus speaks of hoariness

1 Complete Works, L, 55.

2 Ibid.

210 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

as 'that white flower which marks extreme
old age' ; when Proclus calls the universe the
statue of the intellect. . . ." 1

This use of symbols in poetry as well as
philosophy, has a certain power of exhilaration
for all men. "Poets are thus liberating
Gods." 2 In thus characterizing them Emer
son is alluding to one of the technical terms
common in the writings of the Platonists. In
the Platonists the term is "liberated gods," and
refers to an order of gods, "who," so Taylor in
forms us, "are called supercelestial, as being
immediately above the mundane gods." 3
They are also the "azonic" gods of which
Emerson elsewhere speaks.4

In describing the character of poetic in
spiration Emerson makes a further indentifi-
cation of the poet with the philosopher. "It
is a secret which every intellectual man
quickly learns," Emerson explains, "that be
yond the energy of his possessed and conscious
intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of
an intellect doubled on itself), by abandon
ment to the nature of things; that beside his

1 Complete Works, III., 30-31.

2 Ibid., 30.

8 Proclus, Commentaries on the Timceus of Plato, II.,
12, note 7.

* Complete Works, VII., 203.

ART 211

privacy of power as an individual man, there
is a great public power on which he can draw,
by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors,
and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and cir
culate through him; then he is caught up into
the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder,
his thought is law, and his words are univer
sally intelligible as the plants and animals." *
In thus speaking, Emerson is giving his ver
sion of the way in which the Platonists main
tain the intellect perceives the One in ecstasy.
Plotinus writes of this experience: "Hence
it is requisite, that the soul of him who ascends
to the good should then become intellect, and
that he should commit his soul to, and estab
lish it in intellect, in order, that what intellect
sees, his soul may vigilantly receive, and may
through intellect survey the one; not employ
ing any one of the senses, nor receiving any
thing from them, but with a pure intellect,
and with the summit [and as it were, flower]
of intellect, beholding that which is most
pure."2 And again Plotinus writes: "In
tellect possesses a two fold power; one, by
which it perceives intellectually, and beholds
the form which it contains ; but the other by

id., III., 26-27.
2 Select Works, 476-477.

212 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

which it sees things beyond itself by a cer
tain intuition and reception. . . . And
the former, indeed, is the vision of intellect re
plete with wisdom; but the latter, of intellect
inflamed with love. For when it becomes in
sane through being intoxicated with nectar,
then it also becomes amatory." 1 In Emerson
the same or similar expressions occur. "The
poet knows that he speaks adequately then
only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or,
'with the flower of the mind;' not with the
intellect used as an organ, but with the intel
lect released from all service and suffered to
take its direction from its celestial life; or as
the ancients were wont to express themselves,
not with intellect alone but with the intellect
inebriated by nectar." 2

And just as Emerson found in Zoroaster's
Oracles a definition for poetry, so he is able
to make him explain the nature of the poet's
ecstasy. "It is remarkable," he observes,
"that we have, out of the deeps of antiquity in
the oracles ascribed to the half fabulous
Zoroaster, a statement of this fact which every
lover and seeker of truth will recognize. 'It
is not proper,' said Zoroaster, 'to understand

1 On Suicide, 98.

2 Complete Works, III., 27.

ART 213

the Intelligible with vehemence, but if you in
cline your mind, you will apprehend it: not
too earnestly, but bringing a pure and inquir
ing eye. You will not understand it as when
understanding some particular thing, but with
the flower of the mind. Things divine are
not attainable by mortals who understand
sensual things, but only the light-armed ar
rive at the summit." *

In Taylor's Collection of Chaldean Oracles
this oracle is given in three separate extracts,
(i) "You will not apprehend it by an intellec
tual energy, as when understanding some par
ticular thing." (2) "It is not proper to under
stand that intelligible with vehemence, but
with the extended flame of an extended in
tellect; a flame which measures all things, ex
cept that intelligible. But it is requisite to
understand this. For if you incline your
mind, you will understand it though not ve
hemently. It becomes you therefore, bring
ing with you the pure convertible eye of your
soul, to extend the void intellect to the intelli
gible that you may learn its nature, because it
has a subsistence above intellect." 2 In a note
to this is added: "This is spoken of a divine

1 Ibid., I., 213-214.

2 Classical Journal, XVI., 133.

214 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

intelligible which is only to be apprehended
by the flower of intellect, or, in other words,
the unity of the soul." 1 (3) Again the
Oracles read : "Things divine cannot be ob
tained by those whose intellectual eye is di
rected to body; but those only can arrive at
the possession of them, who, stript of their gar
ments, hasten to the summit." 2 The assem
bling of this material and the pruning of the
verbiage show how carefully Emerson had
read the passages.

To explain the nature of inspiration Emer
son draws on other quotations £rom his fa
vorite books. As to the conditions of in
spiration, he refers to Plato. "Plato, in his
seventh epistle," he writes, "notes that the per
ception is only accomplished by long famil
iarity with the objects of intellect, and a life
according to the things themselves. 'Then a
light, as is leaping from a fire, will on a sud
den be enkindled in the soul, and will then it
self nourish itself.' " 3 And again he quotes
from Plato, this time from the Phcedrus, to
the effect that "The man who is his own mas-

1 Ibid., note 2.

*Ibid.t XVII., 258.

3 Complete Works, VIII., 274. Cf. Bohn translation of
Plato, IV., 524, and Select Works of Plotinus, Introduction,
lix, note.

ART 215

ter knocks in vain at the doors of poetry." 1
It is quite evident, then, that in his defini
tion of poetry, of its materials, and of its in
spiration, Emerson is identifying the poet
with the philosopher. A further parallel be
tween the two is seen in Emerson's conception
of true poetic rhymes.

By rhymes Emerson does not mean the
chime of word with word but rather the bal
ance of antagonistic elements composing the
universe. Impressed with it in his view of
the world, he makes it one of the duties of the
poet to attend to such balancings in nature.
Thus he has the pine tree in JVoodnotes sing
of these.2 Merlin, a name for his ideal poet,
attends to recording such rhymes.3 Seyd, an
other name for the same poet, had an ear at
tuned to them.4 And in his critical discussion
of rhyme Emerson points out how true poetic
rhyme rises to this as its highest form. "Of
course rhyme soars and refines with the growth
of mind. The boy liked the drum, the people
liked an overpowering jewsharp tune. Later
they like to transfer that rhyme to life, and to
detect a melody as prompt and perfect in their

1 Complete Works, VIII., 274.
2/Wrf., IX., 54.
*Ibid., 120.
., 276.

2i6 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

daily affairs. Omen and coincidence show
the rhythmical structure of man; hence the
taste for signs, sortilege, prophecy and ful
filment, anniversaries, etc. By and by, when
they apprehend real rhymes, namely, the cor
respondence of parts in Nature — acid and
alkali, body and mind, man and maid, char
acter and history, action and reaction — they
do not longer value rattles and ding-dongs, or
barbaric word-jingle. Astronomy, Botany,
Chemistry, Hydraulics and the elemental
forces have their own periods and returns,
their own grand strains of harmony not less
exact, up to the primeval apothegm that 'there
is nothing on earth which is not in the heavens
in a heavenly form, and nothing in the
heavens which is not on the earth in an earthly
form.' They furnish the poet with grander
pairs and alternations, and will require an
equal expansion in his metres." 1

This notion is the Pythagorean one of the
dualism underlying nature which is a har
mony of antagonistic elements. The Plato-
nists incorporated it into their thought and
Emerson uses it as the basic principle of his
doctrine of Compensation. Its source in the
Platonists is also indicated in Emerson's quo-

i Ibid., VIII., 4&-49-

ART 217

tation of "the primeval apothegm." This is
an adaptation of the Smaragdine Table
"which is of such great authority with the
alchemists," says Taylor, "and which whether
originally written or not by Hermes Tris-
megistus, is doubtless of great antiquity." *
Emerson's quotation is not an exact but a free
rendering of its opening words: "It is true
without a lie, certain, and most true, that
what is beneath is like that which is above,
and what is above is like that which is be
neath, for the purpose of accomplishing the
miracle of one thing." 2 The doctrine of
Platonism which this expresses is given by
Plotinus who holds that all things pre-exist
ideally in the intelligible world. By blend
ing the notion of parallelism with that of an
tagonism Emerson comes to view the relation
of the world of sense to the world of pure in
tellect as one of the great rhymes to which
the poet will attend.

After this analysis of Emerson's canons of
art it appears that in this realm he expected to
find the fruition of his deepest desires as a
philosopher. In the artist he sees the work-

1 Quoted in Proclus, On the Theology of Plato, I., 194,
note.

2i 8 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

ing of the Universal Mind and in the poet, the
supreme artist, he finds one who is working
with the materials and in the manner of
the inquiring spirit of a philosopher. "Of
course,'7 he fails not to add, "when we de
scribe man as poet, and credit him with the
triumphs of the art, we speak of the potential
or ideal man — not found now in any one per
son. You must go through a city or a nation,
and find one faculty here, one there, to build
the true poet withal. Yet all men know the
portrait when it is drawn, and it is part of re
ligion to believe its possible incarnation. He
is the healthy, the wise, the fundamental, the
manly man, seer of the secret; against all the
appearance he sees and reports the truth,
namely, that the soul generates matter. And
poetry is the only verity — the expression of a
sound mind speaking after the ideal, and not
after the apparent." l

It is the poet-philosopher to whom Emer
son looks for the long promised ideal that
Nature has been striving to perfect. As ap
proximations to that ideal, Emerson alludes to
a few men among whom Plato and Plotinus
are found. Thus Nature in her song says :

i Complete Works, VIII., 26-27.

ART 219

"Twice I have moulded an image,

And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day and one of night
And one of the salt sea-sand.

"One in Judaean manger,

And one by Avon stream,
One 1 over against the mouths of Nile,
And one 2 in the Academe." 3

But Emerson's ideal is manifestly unfair to
art, for it expects art to do more than it ought.
It lacks balance and sanity of judgment and
shows an incapacity to do justice to the sensu
ous as well as the spiritual side of the subject.
No better indication of the glaring defects of
Emerson's appreciative criticism can be found
than in his statement that "perhaps Homer
and Milton will be tin pans yet. Better not
to be easily pleased. The poet should rejoice
if he has taught us to despise his song; if he
has so moved us as to lift us — to open the eye of
the intellect to see farther and better." 4 This
extreme is matched by his high estimate
of Proclus. Speaking of his intellectual

1 Plotinus.

2 Plato.

3 Complete Works, IX., 246.

., VIIL, 68.

220 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

strength, Emerson told his auditors in his
Harvard course on philosophy, "What lit
erature should be, he is." 1 His identification
of the poet with the philosopher thus ends in
the banishment of the poet. In this respect
Emerson forsakes Plotinus and goes over
to Plato, although his method of reasoning is
not that employed by Plato. It is due to the
fact that Emerson did not check in himself the
strong ascetic tendency fostered by reading in
the philosophy of Plotinus; which tendency
Plotinus himself had resisted in his valuation
of sensuous beauty.

1 Atlantic Monthly, LL, 827.

CHAPTER VI

MYTHOLOGY

PLATO has the distinction of being the
poet-philosopher among the thinkers of
the world. He had a mind that laid the
foundations for pure speculative metaphysics
and at the same time he was gifted with an
imagination that so blended itself with his
most abstruse thinking that it is difficult to
separate his science from his metaphors.
And these in the extended form of myths or
apologues have such brilliancy of their own
that they make the reading of Plato an en
joyment such as only poetry in its highest
flights can afford. His myth of the charioteer
and the two horses in the Phcedrus, the narra
tive of Er the son of Armenius in the Re
public, the figure of the cave in the same dia
logue, the myths concerning the origin of love
in the Banquet — merely to mention a few ex
amples — have imprinted themselves in the hu
man memory, as Emerson observes, like the
signs of the zodiac. Thus a study of the in-
221

222 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

fluence of Platonism must attend to the imagi
native side of Plato's art as well as to his phil
osophical teaching. This is especially true
of a study of Emerson's Platonism, for his
was a temperament in which imagination was
highly developed. Feeding naturally on the
doctrines of Platonism, he was influenced by
Plato's manner of using myths or fables to set
forth his teachings.

In The American Scholar Emerson uses a
fable to convey his leading conception — the
nature of the scholar. "It is one of those
fables," he writes, "which out of an unknown
antiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom,
that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man
into men, that he might be more helpful to
himself; just as the hand was divided into fin
gers, the better to answer its end. The old
fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime ;
that there is One Man — present to all partic
ular men only partially, or through one
faculty; and that you must take the whole so
ciety to find the whole man." 1

The source of this fable is to be found in
Plato's Banquet. There Aristophanes tells of
the nature of original men: "The entire
form of every individual of the human race

1 Complete Works, L, 82.

MYTHOLOGY 223

was rounded, having the back and sides as in
a circle. It had four hands, and legs equal in
number to the hands ; and two faces upon the
circular neck, alike in every way, and one
head on both the faces placed opposite, and
four ears . . . and from these it is easy
to conjecture how all the other parts were
doubled." 1 Such mortals were terrible in
force — the narrative proceeds — and became so
threatening in their attempts to attack the gods
in heaven that Jupiter determined to halve
them in order to weaken their strength. Tay
lor in a note to his translation refers to the
fable as one "which I doubt not is of greater
antiquity than Plato." 2

With this fable Emerson blends an account
of the use of brothers which Plutarch gives in
his essay, Of Brotherly Love. "And Nature
hath given us very near examples of the use of
brothers, by contriving most of the necessary
parts of our bodies double, as it were, brothers
and twins — as hands, feet, ears, nostrils —
thereby telling us that all these were thus dis
tinguished for mutual benefit and assistance,
and not for variance and discord. And when
she parted the very hands into many and un-

iBohn translation, III., 508-509.

2 The Works of Plato, III., 475, note I.

224 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

equal fingers, she made them thereby the
most curious and artificial of all our mem
bers; in so much that the ancient philosopher
Anaxagoras assigned the hands for the reason
of all human knowledge and discretion. But
the contrary seems the truth. For it is not
man's having hands that makes him the wisest
animal, but his being naturally reasonable and
capable of art was the reason why such organs
were conferred upon him. And this also is
most manifest to every one, that the reason
why Nature out of one seed and source formed
two, three, and more brethren was not for dif
ference and opposition, but that their being
apart might render them the more capable of
assisting one another. For those that were
treble-bodied and hundred-handed, if any
such there were, while they had all their mem
bers joined to each other could do nothing
without them or apart." 1

From Plato, then, Emerson got the idea of
the gods dividing man into men; from Plu
tarch came the reason for the division, namely,
to make man more helpful to himself; and
from the same source came the simile of the di
vision of the hands into fingers. Taylor's note

1 Plutarch, Morals, III., 37.

MYTHOLOGY 225

formed the basis for the assignment of the
fable to an unknown antiquity. Emerson's
own mind fused these elements into a version
quite his own. He uses it to point the moral
he is inculcating; that in the various occupa
tions in which in the divided or social state
men are engaged, it is man acting now in one
function, now in another; in no one is the en
tire man but only a part of him. Hence he
treats the scholar, his topic in hand, as man
thinking. It is an idea that suggests the doc
trine of Universal Mind; but that is present
entire to each man, whereas the One Man is
present to all particular men only partially, or
through one faculty. Emerson, however, ap
plies the doctrine in a way that shows the
theory to be identical with his doctrine of
Universal Mind. "It is remarkable," he ob
serves, "the character of the pleasure we de
rive from the best books. They impress us
with the conviction that one nature wrote and
the same reads •.. . . But for the evidence
thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine
of the identity of all minds, we should suppose
some pre-established harmony, some foresight
of souls that were to be, and some preparation
of stores for their future wants, like the fact

226 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

observed in insects, who lay up food before
death for the young grub they shall never
see." 1

It is to be noted, however, that in one place
Emerson refers this fable of One Man to
Seneca. Speaking of the coldness of Seneca's
virtue, he qualifies by adding, "Yet what noble
words we owe to him: (God divided man
into men, that they might help each other.' " 2
But the fable does not appear in Seneca.
Emerson may have been led to assign it to him
by recollecting the caption of one of Seneca's
Epistles (XVII), which in his own copy
reads: "The Original of all men is the
same." 3 The error in assigning the fable to
Seneca is not alone in Emerson's practice. In
his Nature he assigns to Plato the sentence —
"poetry comes nearer to vital truth than his
tory" ; but it belongs to Aristotle.4 He makes
Plotinus say "the knowledge of the senses is
truly ludicrous";5 but it is a quotation from
Proclus's treatise On Providence and Fate,

1 Complete Works, I., 91-92.

2 Ibid., X., 312.

8 Seneca's Morals by way of Abstract, by Roger L'Es-
trange, 336.

* Complete Works, I., 69. Cf. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 35.

5 Complete Works, X., 281.

MYTHOLOGY 227

where in Emerson's own copy the passage is
marked by his own hand.1 He also refers to
Plato's cave in the Republic as the "cave of
Trophonius," which is the cave mentioned by
Plutach.2 It is not strange then, that writing
as Emerson did late in life, he should have as
signed to Seneca what he had previously gath
ered from Plutarch and Plato.

Emerson uses the fable of the Sphinx to ex
plain one of Plato's teachings. "As near and
proper to us," he writes, "is also that old fable
of the Sphinx, who was said to sit on the road
side and put riddles to every passenger. If
the man could solve the riddle, the Sphinx
was slain. What is our life but an endless
flight of winged facts or events? In splendid
variety these changes come, all putting ques
tions to the human spirit. Those men who
cannot answer by a superior wisdom these
facts or questions of time, serve them. Facts
encumber them, tyrannize over them, and
make the men of routine the men of sense, in
whom a literal obedience to facts has extin
guished every spark of that light by which
man is truly man. But if the man is true to

1 On the Theology of Plato, II., 472.

2 Complete Works, IV., 83. Cf. Plutarch's Lives, trans
lated by John and William Langhorne, II., 293; III., 141.

228 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses
the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a
higher race ; remains fast by the soul and sees
the principle, then the facts fall aptly and sup
ple into their places; they know their master,
and the meanest of them glorifies him." 1

The poetical rendering of this idea is found
in his poem, The Sphinx. There Emerson
explains how the poet solves the secret
which the Sphinx has been keeping for ages.
This secret concerns the condition of man who
seems to stand quite apart from the other
members of creation. These share the eternal
peace of the universe:

"But man crouches and blushes

Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth

He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,

Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,

He poisons the ground. "

With this difference in mind the Sphinx asks
the question which the great mother Nature
has put:

1 Complete Works, II., 32-33.

MYTHOLOGY 229

" 'Who has drugged my boy's cup ?

Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who with sadness and madness
Has turned my child's head?' '

The poet is the man who answers the ques
tion. Thus Emerson explains how the poet
says to the Sphinx :

"The fiend that man harries

Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.

The Lethe of Nature

Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,

Which his eyes seek in vain.

"To vision profounder

Man's spirit must dive ;
His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive." 1

This eternal search on the part of man for
the attainment of a vision ever receding is
symbolical of the truth which Plato lays down

1 Complete Works, IX., 22-23.

23o THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

as the distinguishing characteristic of man.
In the Phcedrus he says that "it is necessary
that a man should understand according to a
generic form, as it is called, which proceeding
from many perceptions is by reasoning com
bined into one." 1 Or as Emerson renders
the passage, "the essence or peculiarity of man
is to comprehend a whole; or that which in
the diversity of sensations can be comprised
under a rational unity." 2 On the other hand,
according to Emerson, who still quotes from
the Phcedrus, "the soul which has never per
ceived the truth, cannot pass into human
form." 3

The suggestion to use the fable of the
Sphinx to set forth this teaching of Plato
arose in Emerson's mind after he had read
Taylor's note explaining the meaning of the
fable. This note occurs on a passage in the
extract from Synesius On Providence, ap
pended to Taylor's translation of the Select
Works of Plotinus. Emerson indicated the
passage in his own copy by inserting at the
place a slip of paper on which "Sphinx" was
inscribed and by noting the passage under that

1 Bohn translation, I., 325.

2 Complete Works, IV., 63.

*Ibid. Cf. Bohn translation, I., 325-

MYTHOLOGY 231

heading in his index. "It appears to me,"
the note reads, "that the ancients, by the
sphinx designed to represent to us the nature
of the phantasy or imagination. In order to
be convinced of which, it is necessary to ob
serve that the rational soul, or the true man,
consists of intellect, dianoia or the discursive
energy of reason, and opinion; but the fic
titious man, or the irrational soul, commences
from the phantasy, under which desire and
anger subsist. Hence, the basis of the ra
tional life is opinion, but the summit of the
irrational life is phantasy. . . . But the
riddles of the sphinx are images of the obscure
and intricate nature of the phantasy. He,
therefore, who is unable to solve the riddles of
the sphinx, i. e., who cannot comprehend the
dark and perplexed nature of the phantasy,
will be drawn into her embraces and torn in
pieces; viz., the phantasy in such a one will
subject to its power the rational life, cause its
indivisible energies to become divisible, and
thus destroy as much as possible its very es

sence." 1

With the idea expressed in this note Emer
son's conception of man as a thinking being
who seeks principles beneath facts easily

1 Select Works, 539, note i.

232 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

blended. The opposition between one who
attends only to facts and one who grasps prin
ciples passes over to the opposition between
phantasy or imagination, the highest form of
the perception of sensible things, and intellect,
which is a faculty of the soul superior to sense
perception. With this new pair of opposing
elements Emerson identifies the Sphinx and
the Poet respectively. Taylor had explained
the equivalence of phantasy and the Sphinx
and Emerson was but expressing his own idea
when he makes the poet representative of in
tellect.

Such an explanation does not strain the
poem. In his prose account of the fable Em
erson, holding to the common interpretation,
says that the Sphinx sitting by the roadside
"puts riddles to every passenger"; but in the
poem the Sphinx herself is perplexed. She is
pictured drowsy and brooding on. the world;
her first words are :

"Who'll tell me my secret,

The ages have kept?
I awaited the seer

While they slumbered and slept."

And the specific question she puts is that
which she had heard from Nature, the great

MYTHOLOGY 233

mother, who is inquiring concerning the
secret of man's condition. And the reason
why the Sphinx is unable to answer the ques
tion can be inferred from the Poet's words to
her:

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits;

Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh, cummin for the Sphinx
Her muddy eyes to clear!"

Such a characterization points to phantasy as
the function of the soul which the Sphinx rep
resents. The five wits all feed imagination,
or phantasy. And the Sphinx acknowledges
as much to the poet.

"The old Sphinx bit her thick lip-
Said, 'Who taught thee me to name?'
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow ;
Of thine eye I am eyebeam."

That is, phantasy, or imagination, is the yoke
fellow of the poet. The union of phantasy
and intellect as necessary factors in the soul's
life is here indicated. It thus appears that
only by following the explanation of Taylor,
that is, by identifying the Sphinx with phan
tasy, or imagination, that we can come to

234 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

understand what Emerson is aiming at in his
poem.

This explanation also gives meaning to cer
tain details which otherwise would remain
meaningless. In Emerson's prose version of
the myth we read that if one was able to solve
the secret, the Sphinx was slain. Taylor's
note, however, explains this as follows: "But
he who, like CEdipus, is able to solve the enig
mas of the sphinx, or, in other words, to com
prehend the dark essence of his phantasy, will,
by illuminating its obscurity with the light of
intellect, cause it, by becoming lucid through
out, to be no longer what it was before." l
And again: "Her [phantasy's] wings are
images of the elevating powers, which the
phantasy naturally possesses; for it is re-ele
vated in conjunction with the returning soul,
to the region everyway resplendent with
divine light." 2 In other words, phantasy
when intellect functions properly is elevated
and shines with a light imparted by intellect.
Or as Emerson renders the change:

"Uprose the merry Sphinx

And crouched no more in stone;

1 Select Works, 540, note i.

MYTHOLOGY 235

She melted into purple cloud,

She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;

She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave;

She stood Monadnoc's head."

That is, the imagination of the poet when
illuminated by intellect uses things as sym
bols, thus translating earthly things into
higher power.

It is fitting, then, that Emerson should give
the last part of his poem over to Nature. It
is she that had originally asked the question;
the Sphinx got it from her. And so the poem
properly ends with the sanction which Na
ture gives to the truth that the Poet has spoken.

"Through a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame;
'Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am/ '

The sentiment is that of the microcosm.

Another myth which Emerson uses to point
a meaning is one which he found in his
Bohn edition of Plato. There in a note to a
passage in Sisyphus, a pseudo-Platonic dia
logue, he read of "an ^Esopo-Socratic fable,"

236 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

which the editor says was "first published in
a latent metrical form by De Furia, from a
Vatican MS., but recently in a more complete
state from an Athos MS. by Boissonade."
The English version of it runs :

"To the gods Apollo, his long arrows holding,
Spoke thus — Who knows the arrow to let fly,
Than the far-darting farther? On the strife
With Phoebus enter'd Zeus, his weapons handling.
In Ares' helmet Hermes shook the lots,
Which Phoebus first obtaining, with his hands
The bent bow pushing from him, and the string
Letting go sharply, first his arrow fix'd
Within the distant gardens of the West.
When with his stride did Zeus the distance clear,
And cried — Where shall I shoot? no space have I.
And no bow drawing, bow-man's glory gained." l

Emerson uses this fable to illustrate the
superiority of character over talent. "It is a
fine fable," he writes, "for the advantage of
character over talent, the Greek legend of the
strife of Jove and Phoebus. Phoebus chal
lenged the gods, and said, Who will outshoot
the far darting Apollo?' Zeus said, 'I will.'
Mars shook the lots in his helmet, and that
of Apollo leaped out first. Apollo stretched

1 The Works of Plato, Bohn translation, VI, 107, note 3.

MYTHOLOGY 237

his bow and shot his arrow into the extreme
west. Then Zeus rose, and with one stride
cleared the whole distance, and said, 'Where
shall I shoot? there is no space left.' So the
bowman's prize was adjudged to him who
drew no bow." 1

In his poem, Uriel, Emerson uses a bit of
mythology of his own creation. It tells of
the lapse of the archangel Uriel from his high
state due to his bold philosophy of the good.
The meaning of the fable is best understood
when viewed in its relation to Emerson's
Platonism.

Emerson held to the essential goodness of
all things, including what we usually call
evil. "I own I am gladdened by seeing the
predominance of the saccharine principle
throughout vegetable nature, and not less by
beholding in morals that unrestrained inun
dation of the principle of good into every
chink and hole that selfishness has left open,
yea into selfishness and sin itself; so that no
evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme
satisfactions." 2 "Thus a sublime confidence
is fed at the bottom of the heart that, in spite
of appearances, in spite of malignity and

* Complete Works, VII., 184.
tf., II., 3I7-3I&

238 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

blind self-interest living for the moment, an
eternal, beneficent necessity is always bring
ing things right; and though we should fold
our arms — which we cannot do, for our duty
requires us to be the very hands of this guid
ing sentiment, and work in the present mo
ment — the evils we suffer will at last end
themselves through the incessant opposition of
Nature to everything hurtful." 1

This is a doctrine which Emerson found
in Platonism. "Evil according to old phi
losophers," he tells us, "is good in the mak
ing." 2 It is to the Platonists that he refers.
"Every part, indeed, of this mundane fabric
and drama," says Proclus, "has for its end
good; since no part of it is left inordinate;
but it is so woven with other parts, as to con
tribute to the well being of the universe." 3
And in his own copy of the Select Works of
Plotinus he has indexed under "Good of
Evil" a passage from Plato quoted in a note
by Taylor. "Conformably to this, it is di
vinely said by Plato in the Republic: 'What
ever comes from the Gods to the man who is
beloved by the Gods, will all be the best possi-

1 Ibid., X., 188-189.

2 Ibid., IV., 138.

3 On Providence and Fate, in On the Theology of Plato,
II., 466.

MYTHOLOGY 239

ble, unless he has some necessary ill from
former miscarriage. Hence, if the just man
happens to be in poverty or disease, or in any
other of those seeming evils, these things issue
to him in something good either alive or
dead.' " 1

It is this doctrine that the archangel Uriel
refers to when he expressed the sentiment that
caused his lapse.

" 'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' '

And though obscured in his fall, Uriel's voice
of scorn was still heard shrilling, "Out of the
good of evil born" — a sentiment that filled
the old gods with fear.

But Emerson owes to Plotinus not only the
central idea of the poem, but the manner of
its expression. Thus, in explaining himself,
Uriel uses symbolical language of line and
circle. Such symbolical use of geometrical
terms is constant in Plato and the Platonists.
"For a right line," Proclus explains, "is im
perfect, as always capable of being extended;
but a circle and a sphere are most perfect, as

1 Select Works, 361, note I.

240 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

not receiving increase, and as making the end
of their motion the beginning." 1 Uriel thus,
in giving his sentiment "against the being of a
line," was talking the language of Platonism.
In fabricating the fable, too, Emerson
draws on the notions of Platonism for certain
details. Of the time of Uriel's lapse Emer
son writes :

"It fell in the ancient periods

Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days."

This conception of time is that of Plato in
the Timceus. Time is there defined as an
image of eternity and was created by the
Demiurgus along with the universe. "But
besides this," Plato adds, "he contrived the
days and nights, months and years, which had
no existence prior to the universe, but rose
into being contemporaneously with its forma
tion." 2 The time of Uriel's lapse was in that
eternal period before time was.

Again, the nature of the punishment that
Uriel suffers is that frequently referred to by
Plato and the Platonists. In Plato the trans-

1 Commentaries on the Timceus of Plato, II., 445.
2Bohn translation, II., 341.

MYTHOLOGY 241

migration of the soul is more than once indi
cated ; * and in Plotinus the reasons for the
lapse of the soul into the world of matter are
given. "The assertions, therefore/' Plotinus
says, "are by no means discordant with each
other, which declare that souls are sown in
generation, and that they descend for the sake
of causing the perfection of the universe;
likewise that they are condemned to suffer
punishment, and are confined in a cave." 2
Adopting the hint of the lapse of the soul into
the realms of generation and its transmigra
tion therein, Emerson says of Uriel:

UA sad self-knowledge, withering, fell
On the beauty of Uriel;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud;
Whether doomed to long gyration
In the sea of generation,
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight." 3

In closing his essay, Manners, Emerson ap
pears a second time as an inventor of a fable
out of suggestions he found in his Platonic

iBohn translation, I., 325; II., 347.

2 Five Books, 270-271. Cf. Complete Works, IX., 410.

3 Complete Works, IX., 114.

242 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

sources. Speaking of the character of human
society, he observes : "Too good for banning,
and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a
tradition of the pagan mythology, in any at
tempt to settle its character. (I overheard
Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of de
stroying the earth ; he said it had failed ; they
were all rogues and vixens, who went from
bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded
each other. Minerva said she hoped not;
they were only ridiculous little creatures, with
this odd circumstance, that they had a blur,
or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near;
if you called them bad, they would appear so;
if you called them good, they would appear
so; and there was no one person or action
among them which would not puzzle her owl,
much more all Olympus, to know whether it
was fundamentally bad or good.' " 1

This fable appears to be a presentation in
dialogue form of an idea which Emerson
noted in his Plutarch. There, in his essay Of
Isis and Osiris, in a passage marked by Em
erson's own hand, can be read: "For the
harmony of the world is (according to Hera-
clitus) like that of a bow or a harp, alternately

d., in, 155.

MYTHOLOGY 243

tightened and relaxed; and according to
Euripides,

Nor good nor bad here's to be found apart; I
But both immixed in one, for greater art.

And, therefore, this most ancient opinion hath
been handed down from the theologists and
law-givers to the poets and philosophers, it
having an original fathered upon none, but
having gained a persuasion both strong and
indelible, and being everywhere professed
and received by barbarians as well as Grecians
— and that not only in vulgar discourses and
public fame, but also in their secret mysteries
and open sacrifices — that the world is neither
hurried about by wild chance without intelli
gence, discourse and direction, nor yet that
there is but one reason, which as it were with
a rudder or with gentle and easy reins directs
it and holds it in; but that, on the contrary,
there are in it several differing things, and
those made up of bad as well as good; or
rather (to speak more plainly) that Nature
produces nothing here but what is mixed and
tempered." 1 By appropriating this view of
the world and assigning characters Emerson

1 Morals, IV., 105-106.

244 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

was able to work out a fable in which he sums
up his teaching on the matter in hand.

In another instance Emerson expresses a
familiar idea of Platonism through a fable
which he says "seems somehow to have
been dropped from the current mythologies." 1

"Saturn grew weary of sitting alone, or
with none but the great Uranus or Heaven be
holding him, and he created an oyster. Then
he would act again, but he made nothing
more, but went on creating the race of oysters.
Then Uranus cried, 'A new work, O Saturn 1
the old is not good again.'

"Saturn replied, 'I fear. There is not only
the alternative of making and not making, but
also of unmaking. Seest thou the great sea,
how it ebbs and flows? so it is with me; my
power ebbs; and if I put forth my hands, I
shall not do, but undo. Therefore I do what
I have done; I hold what I have got; and so
I resist Night and Chaos.'

" *O Saturn,' replied Uranus, 'thou canst
not hold thine own but by making more.
Thy oysters are barnacles and cockles, and
with the next flowing of the tide they will be
pebbles and sea foam.'

" *I see,' rejoins Saturn, 'thou art in league

1 Complete Works, IM 296.

MYTHOLOGY 24,5

with Night, thou art become an evil eye; thou
spakest from love; now thy words smite me
with hatred. I appeal to Fate, must there not
be rest?' — 'I appeal to Fate, also/ said
Uranus, 'must there not be motion?' — But
Saturn was silent, and went on making oysters
for a thousand years.

"After that, the word of Uranus came into
his mind like a ray of the sun, and he made
Jupiter; and then he feared again; and nature
froze, the things that were made went back
ward, and to save the world, Jupiter slew his
father Saturn." 1

The fable sets forth the opposition between
the principle of motion and the principle of
rest. Emerson identifies the one with Inno
vation and the other with Conservatism.
They are the two principles in accordance
with which Plato builds up his conception of
the world of matter and of the world of pure
ideas; and they were inherited from the
Pythagorean speculation on the universe as a
harmony of mutually antagonistic elements.
It is a familiar idea in Emerson and here he
uses Plato's manner of mythologizing in order
to express the truth.

At the close of his essay on Immortality

id., I., 296-297.

246 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Emerson recounts a fable which he had prob
ably met with in one of his Hindoo books.1 It
deals with the reluctance of Yama, the lord
of Death, to fulfill his promise to Nachiketas,
the son of Gautama, which was to grant him
three boons of his own choice. Two he
willingly granted, but the third, which was a
request to unfold the history of the soul after
death, Yama at first declines to answer; but
Nachiketas growing so importunate, he speaks
to him of the eternal nature of the soul. This
Indian fable is used by Emerson much in the
manner of Plato in his Phcedo, where, after
the philosophic discussion on immortality, one
of the characters tells a fable of the other
world.2

Associated with these fables of Emerson's
are his utterances which he assigns to "his
Orphic poet." This is no other person than
Emerson himself, who is working out a sug
gestion he found in Proclus. "He who
desires to signify divine concerns through
symbols in Orphic," says Proclus, "and, in
short, accords with those who write fables
concerning the gods." 3 He uses this sugges-

i Ibid., VIII., 349-352.

2Bohn translation, L, 117, et sq.

3 On the Theology of Plato, L, 12.

MYTHOLOGY 247

tion in his Nature and also in his essay, The
Poet, although in this latter reference the poet
is not styled Orphic.

In Nature this Orphic poet sings some tra
ditions of man and nature. Among his utter
ances are these words: aMan is the dwarf
of himself. Once he was permeated and dis
solved by spirit. He filled nature with his
overflowing currents. Out from him sprang
the sun and moon; from man the sun, from
woman the moon. The laws of his mind, the
periods of his actions externized themselves
into day and night, into year and the seasons.
But, having made for himself this huge shell,
his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins
and veinlets ; he is shrunk to a drop. He sees
that the structure still fits him, but fits him
colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him,
now it corresponds to him from far and on
high. He adores timidly his own work.
Now is man the follower of the sun and
woman the follower of the moon. Yet some
times he starts in his slumber, and wonders at
himself and his house, and muses strangely
at the resemblance betwixt him and it. He
perceives that if his law is still paramount, if
still he have elemental power, if his word is
sterling yet in nature, it is not conscious

248 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

power, it is not inferior, but superior to his
will. It is instinct." *

The underlying idea is the familiar one of
the mysterious relation of man to nature. In
explaining it Emerson had used the doctrines
of Platonism, as has already been indicated.
But in this instance he has seized upon certain
suggestions found in the Platonists and at
tempted to work them into a semblance of a
tradition or fable.

lamblichus gave him the idea that man is
but a dwarf of himself. In his Mysteries of
the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians lam
blichus had written: "I say, therefore, that
the more divine intelligible man, who was
formerly united to the Gods by the vision of
them, afterwards entered into another soul,
which is coadapted to the human form, and
through this became fettered with the bonds
of necessity and fate." 2

In Proclus Emerson found the suggestion
that out of man sprang the sun and moon.
Speaking of the goddess Athena, Proclus says :
"But the Egyptians relate, that in the adytum
of the Goddess [Athena] there was this in
scription : 'I am the things that are, that will

1 Complete Works, I., 71-72.

2 P. 332.

MYTHOLOGY 249

be, and that have been. No one has ever laid
open the garment by which I am concealed.
The fruit which I brought forth was the

sun.' "

Such a conception is in keeping with the
idea that the Platonists held: that visible
things are effluxious from the gods. Plu
tarch's essay, Of Isis and Osiris, contains many
instances of such an interpretation. Emerson
himself, in another place, quotes Proclus to
the effect that "gold and silver grow7 in the
earth from the celestial gods — an effluxion
from them." 2 It was natural, then, for him
to carry over the idea to man in his former
union with the Divine. Nature thus became
an effluxion from man's spirit.

The idea that man is now a follower of the
sun is, perhaps, a recollection of Plutarch's
remark: "We appear to be passionately in
love with the sun." 3 And the sun, he says,
interferes with spiritual vision "by sense with
drawing the rational intellect from that which
is to that which appears." 4

The suggestion that woman is a follower of
the moon may have arisen in Emerson's mind

1 Commentaries on the Timaus of Plato, L, 82.

2 Complete Works, X., 272.
* Morals, IV., 294.
*Ibid., III., 82.

250 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

as a natural parallel. Perhaps, however,
Plutarch's comparison of Venus to the moon
in his dialogue, Of Love, may have been in
Emerson's thought, especially as it occurs in a
passage where the god of love is compared
to the Sun.1

If this reasoning be true, and it is not a
strained analysis, Emerson's utterances as
Orphic poet would be an instance of the truth
of the remark he makes on Plutarch — "A
poet might rhyme all day with hints drawn
from Plutarch, page on page." 2

It thus becomes quite evident that teaching
by myth, fable or apologue is a favorite way
of Emerson's. Emerson's myths are, of
course, much inferior to Plato's in depth and
in brilliancy, but they testify to a conscious
effort on Emerson's part to follow at a dis
tance in the distinctly Platonic manner of
blending philosophy and poetry.

As was seen in the explanation of the
Sphinx, Emerson is careful to rationalize the
myths that interested him. It was a practice
which Plato himself had used in his searching
criticism of the old Greek myths. In the
later Platonists myths are frequently ration-

rf., IV., 293-
2 Complete Works, X., 301.

MYTHOLOGY 251

alized. In his copy of On the Theology of
Plato Emerson had indexed a passage,
"Mythology," which taught that the "mytho
logical mode which indicates divine concerns
through conjectures is ancient, concealing
truth under a multitude of veils, and pro
ceeding in a manner similar to nature, which
extends sensible figments of intelligibles, ma
terial, of immaterial, partible, of impartible
natures, and images, and things which have a
false being, of things perfectly true." l Into
this habit Emerson himself falls.

The myth of Pan held Emerson's attention.
He gives it two interpretations. "The my
thology," he observes, "cleaves close to Na
ture; and what else was it they represented in
Pan, god of shepherds, who was not yet com
pletely finished in godlike form, blocked
rather, and wanting the extremities; had em
blematic horns and feet? Pan, that is, All.
His habit was to dwell in mountains, lying on
the ground, tooting like a cricket in the sun,
refusing to speak, clinging to his behemoth
ways. He could intoxicate by the strain of
his shepherd's pipe — silent yet to most, for his
pipes make the music of the spheres, which,
because it sounds eternally, is not heard at all

1 On the Theology of Plato, L, 13.

252 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

by the dull, but only by the mind. He wears
a coat of leopard spots or stars. He could
terrify by earth-born fears called panics
Yet was he in the secret of Nature and could
look both before and after. He was only
seen under disguises, and was not represented
by any outward image ; a terror sometimes, at
others a placid omnipotence." 1

This account seems to be largely built out
of materials Emerson found in Cudworth.
In a passage, which Emerson had indexed,
"Pan," Cudworth gives a quotation from a
Platonist named Phornutus, who thus de
scribes Pan: " 'The lower parts of Pan
(saith he) were rough and goatish, because of
the asperity of the earth; but his upper parts
of a human form, because the ether being ra
tional and intellectual, is the Hegemonic of
the world'; adding hereunto, 'that Pan was
feigned ... to be clothed with the skin
of a libbard, because of the bespangled
heavens, and the beautiful variety of things in
the world; to live in a desert, because of the
singularity of the world; and, lastly, to be a
good demon by reason of the TPO«TTW« afoot \6yo^
that supreme mind, reason, and understand-

1 Complete Works, XII., 35-36.

MYTHOLOGY 253

ing, that governs all in it.' " x In a second
passage Cudworth adds: "First of all, Pan,
as the very word plainly implies him to be
a universal Numen, and as he was supposed
to be the Harmostes of the whole world, or
to play upon the world as a musical instru
ment, according to that of Orpheus (or
Onomacritus) :

'ApfJLOViaV KOVfJLOLO Kp€Kd)V

So have we before showed that by him the
Arcadians and Greeks meant, not the cor
poreal world inanimate, nor yet as endued
with a senseless nature only, but as proceeding
from an intellectual principle or divine spirit,
which framed it harmoniously; and as being
still kept in tune, acted and governed by the
same." *

And again Cudworth says: "The an
cient mythologists represented the nature of
the universe by Pan playing upon a pipe
or harp ... ; as if nature did, by a silent
melody, make all the parts of the universe
everywhere dance in measure and proportion,
itself being as it were in the meantime de-

1 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, L, 583.
uf., II., 208.

254 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

lighted and ravished with the re-echoing of its
own harmony." 1

In interpreting this myth, however, Emer
son does not follow Cudworth. Cudworth
identifies Pan with God; but Emerson sees in
the myth either a representation of instinct or
of man. "Such homage," he says of it, "did
the Greek — delighting in accurate form, not
fond of the extravagant and unbounded —
pay to the inscrutable force we call Instinct,
or Nature when it first becomes intelligent." 2
And in another place he holds: "The great
Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin
to signify the beautiful variety of things, and
the firmament, his coat of stars — was but the
representative of thee, O rich and various
Man! thou palace of sight and sound, carry
ing in thy senses the morning and the night
and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain,
the geometry of the City of God; in thy heart,
the bower of love and the realms of right and
wrong." 3

In his poetry, however, Emerson adopts
the notion of Cudworth that Pan represented
God who is infused into all things. Hence,

1 Ibid., I., 242.

2 Complete Works, XII., 36.
slbid., I., 205-206.

XA

f Of THE

[ UNIVERSITY )

MYTHOLOGY 255

in the poem, Pan, he uses the idea to set forth
his favorite doctrine of the Over-Soul.

"O what are heroes, prophets, men,

But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth

blow

A momentary music. Being's tide
Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms
Live, robed with beauty, painted by the sun;
Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God,
Throbs with an overmastering energy
Knowing and doing. Ebbs the tide, they lie
White hollow shells upon the desert shore,
But not the less the eternal wave rolls on
To animate new millions, and exhale
Races and planets, its enchanted foam." 1

With Cudworth, too, Emerson agrees in the
use of the myth of Proteus. In Plato there
are several references to that figure as an
elusive being, constantly changing form; but
it is Cudworth who applies the idea to the
ever-changing flux in the world of matter.
In a long passage on the eternal change in
nature, which Emerson has marked in his own
copy, Cudworth says that the "matter of the
universe is always substantially the same, and
neither more nor less, but only Proteanly

•id., IX., 360,

256 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

transformed into different shapes." * And,
in like manner, Emerson observes: "The
philosophical perception of identity through
endless mutations of form makes him know
the Proteus. What else am I who laughed
or wept yesterday, who slept last night like a
corpse, and this morning stood and ran?
And what see I on any side but the transmi
grations of Proteus?"2

Emerson also adopts the view of the Pla-
tonists who see hidden meanings in the defects
which are associated with certain mythologi
cal characters. "In the old mythology, my-
thologists observe," says Emerson, "defects
are ascribed to divine natures, as lameness to
Vulcan, blindness to Cupid, and the like — to
signify exuberances." 3 In keeping with this
idea of Cupid is Emerson's conception of the
piercing quality of love's vision, though love
is usually represented as a blind god. The
poem, Cupido, turns on this thought:

"The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,

1 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, L, 68.

2 Complete Works, II., 31-32.
*lbid., III., 18. Cf. IX., 72.

MYTHOLOGY 257

Around, below, above.

His blinding light

He flingeth white

On God's and Satan's brood,

And reconciles

By mystic wiles

The evil and the good." 1

Emerson's authority for this manner of in
terpreting the defects of divine natures is
Proclus. In his Commentaries on the Tim-
ceus of Plato is written: "It must be care
fully observed, that defects when ascribed to
divine natures adumbrate transcendencies;
just as those whose eyes are filled with solar
light, are said to be incapable of perceiving
mundane objects; for this incapacity is noth
ing more than transcendency of vision. In
like manner, the lameness of Vulcan sym
bolically indicated his exemption from any
defective progression." 2 Emerson's explana
tion of the blindness of Cupid is an example
contributed by himself.

In Plutarch Emerson found a bit of
mythology which he uses in characteristic
fashion. Plutarch says: "The sun never
transgresses its limited measures, as Hera-

1 Ibid., IX., 257.
2 1., 120, note i.

258 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

clitus says: if it did do so, the Furies, which
are the attendants of Justice, would find it out
and punish it." * This piece of mythology
Emerson identifies with the doctrine of Nem
esis, which he holds underlies the concep
tion of compensation. "This is that ancient
doctrine of Nemesis," he tells us, "who keeps
watch in the universe and lets no offence go
unchastised. The Furies, they said, are at
tendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven
should transgress his path they would punish
him." 2

But no phase of ancient mythology did
Emerson more carefully explain in terms of
human experience than the belief in Daemons,
as they are treated in the writings of Plato and
the Platonists. He used details concerning
them in elaborating his conception in
Daemonic Love; but what is more he is care
ful to state the modern equivalent of the
Daemon. Thus, in a review of certain phases
of demonology, he shows little regard for the
significance of dreams or omens. "But the
faith in peculiar and alien power," he adds,
"takes another form in the modern mind,
much more resembling the ancient doctrine of

* Morals, III., 26.

2 Complete Works, II., 107.

MYTHOLOGY 259

the guardian genius. The belief that par
ticular individuals are attended by a good
fortune which makes them desirable associ
ates in any enterprise of uncertain success,
exists not only among those who take part in
political and military projects, but influences
all joint action of commerce and affairs, and
a corresponding assurance in the individuals
so distinguished meets and justifies the expec
tation of others by a boundless self-trust.
. . . This faith is familiar in one form —
that often a certain abdication of prudence
and foresight is an element of success; that
children and young persons come off safe
from casualties that would have proved dan
gerous to wiser people. We do not think the
young will be forsaken; but he is fast ap
proaching the age when the sub-miraculous
external protection and leading are with
drawn and he is committed to his own care.
The young man takes a leap in the dark and
alights safe. As he comes into manhood, he
remembers passages and persons that seem,
as he looks at them now, to have been super-
naturally deprived of injurious influence on
him. His eyes were holden that he could not
see. But he learns that such risks he may no
longer run. He observes, with pain, not that

260 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

he incurs mishaps here and there, but that his
genius, whose invisible benevolence was
tower and shield to him, is no longer present
and active." 1

In another place, he explains the meaning
of a presiding genius as held by the ancients
by writing: "We recognize obscurely the
same fact, though we give it our own names.
We say that every man is entitled to be valued
by his best moment. We measure our friends
so. We know they have intervals of folly,
whereof we take no heed, but wait these ap-
pearings of the genius, which are sure and
beautiful. On the other side, everybody
knows people who appear bedridden, and
who, with all degrees of ability, never im
press us with the air of free agency. They
know it, too, and peep with their eyes to see
if you detect their sad plight. We fancy,
could we pronounce the solving word and dis
enchant them, the cloud would roll up, the
little rider would be discovered and unseated,
and they would regain their freedom. The
remedy seems never to be far off, since the
first step into thought lifts this mountain of
necessity. Thought is the pent air-ball which

i Complete Works, X., 15-16.

MYTHOLOGY 261

can rive the planet, and the beauty which
certain objects have for him is the friendly
fire which expands the thought and acquaints
the prisoner that liberty and power await
him." 1

In such exposition of the meaning of a pre
siding genius Emerson is treating in his own
way a subject which Plutarch, in his Dis
course Concerning Socrates' Daemon, had al
ready handled and which in Proclus is the
occasion for much speculation. Without
adopting the views of either, Emerson main
tains his independence, while at the same
time engaged in a solution of the question
which Socrates' utterances concerning his
Daemon had raised.

Thus it is evident that reading in the
Platonists fed the moralizing tendency in
Emerson's mind and afforded him interpreta
tions of parts of ancient mythology which he
either adopts as his own or with such changes
as he wished to make in them. And just as
he gathered homely proverbs, so he attended
to the collection of such myths as attracted
his attention in his reading. He found them
significant expressions of the Universal Mind.

i Ibid., VI., 287-288.

262 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

And thus the practice of using fables to set
forth his teaching and the habit of rationaliz
ing myths testify to the influence of the lit
erary and critical side of Platonism on his
own work.

CHAPTER VII

THE ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM

THE works of Plato and the Platonists
were great storehouses from which Em
erson drew the material of his thought on
nature, soul, love, beauty, art and mythology.
His indebtedness to Platonism is thus an as
sured thing. But Emerson had read thought
fully, if not widely, in other provinces of lit
erature and philosophy, and in the course of
that reading had gathered much that he
worked into his essays. But no body of
thought did he esteem as highly as Platonism.
"Plato is philosophy," he maintained, "and
philosophy is Plato." 1 Imbued with this
idea, he either deliberately leavened the sug
gestions that came to him through non-Pla
tonic sources with the leaven of Platonism, or
he openly criticized the new thought from
the standpoint of Platonic theory. There
thus remains the consideration of the signifi
cant phases of Emerson's thinking in which

1 Complete Works, IV., 40.

263

264 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Platonism though blended with other thought
is seen in the ascendent.

In the writings of Oriental peoples, espe
cially the Hindoos, Emerson found much
congenial reading. In his library these vol
umes of the ancient East were assigned to a
position on his shelves close to the Platonists ;
and in his thought the teachings of both were
most intimately associated ; for both dwelt on
the fundamental unity of things. In his
essay on Plato he uses long quotations from
his Eastern books to explain the idea of the
ineffable One of -the Platonists. "The rap
tures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion," he
explicitly states, "lose all being in one Being.
This tendency finds its highest expression in
the religious writings of the East, and chiefly
in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the
Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.
Those writings contain little else than this
idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains
in celebrating it." 1

Emerson holds, too, that Plato drew certain
elements of his thought from the East,
whither, perhaps, he journeyed.2 He also
maintains that the influence of the East was

1 Complete Works, IV., 49.
s Ibid., 42.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 265

an important factor in the development of the
Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and his followers.
"When Orientalism in Alexandria found the
Platonists," he told the auditors in his Har
vard course on philosophy, "a new school was
produced. The sternness of the Greek school,
feeling its way forward from argument to
argument, met and combined with the beauty
of Orientalism. Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry,
and Jamblicus were the apostles of the new
philosophy." 1 Orientalism and Platonism
were thus intimately associated in his survey
of the philosophy of the ancient world.

This association of the sacred writers of the
East with Plato and the Platonists may have
arisen from Emerson's adoption of the critical
attitude of Cousin. That French philoso
pher was interested both in Greek thought
and in the books of the East. He maintained
that the origins of Grecian culture and philos
ophy are to be found in the sacred books of
the Oriental peoples.2 He denominated Asia
the land whose fundamental character is
unity; where all the elements of human nature
lay enveloped indistinct within each other;
while Greece was the land in which these

1 Atlantic Monthly, LI., 826.

2 Introduction to the History of Philosophy, 42.

266 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

same elements were developed and separated.1
It is a distinction that recalls Emerson's state
ment that Asia is the country of unity, while
Greece is the land of culture and intellectual
freedom.2

It is just this intellectual quality that pre
dominates in Emerson's own adaption of the
philosophy of the ancient East; wherever
the teachings of the Orient enter into his
thought they are intellectualized and restated
in the terms of Hellenic philosophy.

One doctrine of the East that attracted
Emerson's attention is that of illusion. In
his own work the subject is a familiar one; he
has an essay and poem named Illusions and a
poem, Mala, along with several scattered ref
erences to the same topic. In explaining the
idea he writes: "This belief that the higher
use of the material world is to furnish us
types or pictures to express the thoughts of
the mind, is carried to its logical extreme by
the Hindoos, who, following Buddha, have
made it the central doctrine of their religion
that what we call Nature, the external world,
has no real existence, — is only phenomenal.
Youth, age, property, condition, events, per-

1 Ibid., 34, 39.

2 Complete Works, IV., 52.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 267

sons, — self, even, — are successive maias (de
ceptions) through which Vishnu mocks and
instructs the soul." 1

In Emerson illusion becomes variety and
variety his favorite philosophers had taught
him to connect with identity. Thus toward
the end of his essay, Illusions, he writes:
"The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus
and Xenophanes measured their force on this
problem of identity. Diogenes of Apollonia
said that unless the atoms were made of one
stuff, they could never blend and act with
one another. But the Hindoos, in their sacred
writings, express the liveliest feeling, both of
the essential identity and of that illusion which
they conceive variety to be." 2 Having thus
identified illusions with variety, Emerson was
able to resort to Platonic doctrine to explain
the nature of the constant element amid all
illusions.

In his poem, Illusions, Emerson applies his
teaching of the permanency of law in the
world. Coleridge had taught him how to in
terpret Plato's conception of the idea as the
only constant thing in a world of perpetual
flux by identifying it with the law which the

1 Complete Works, VIIL, 14-15.

2 Ibid., VI., 324.

268 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

mind finds operating in nature. Thus after
a statement of the flowing of all mortal things,
ever mutable and ever vanishing into vain
illusions, he gives in his second stanza the as
surance that —

"When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Behold the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas becomes solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world." 1

In a second instance he falls back on a
familiar tenet of his Platonism that beneath
all things there is one constant stuff. The ele
ment of permanency is here conceived not as
law but in a more physical way as a primal
world-matter according to the old partialists
among the Greek thinkers. "Such are the
days," he writes, "the earth is the cup, the sky
is the cover, of the immense bounty of Nature
which is offered us for our daily aliment; but

1 Complete Works, IX., 287-288.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 269

what a force of illusion begins life with us
and attends us to the end! We are coaxed,
flattered and duped from morn to eve, from
birth to death ; and where is the old eye that
ever saw through the deception? The Hin
doos represent Maia, the illusory energy of
Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes.
As if, in this gale of warring elements which
life is, it was necessary to bind souls to human
life as mariners in a tempest lash themselves
to the mast and bulwarks of a ship, and
Nature employed certain illusions as her ties
and straps, — a rattle, a doll, an apple, for a
child; skates, a river, a boat, a horse, a gun,
for the growing boy; and I will not begin
to name those of the youth and adult, for they
are numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask
falls and the pupil is permitted to see that
all is one stuff, cooked and painted under
many counterfeit appearances." 1

In another mood he asserts that beneath the
illusions of time is eternity and thus with
Plato conceives of time as the image of eter
nity. "In stripping time of its illusions, in
seeking to find what is the heart of the day,
we come to the quality of the moment, and
drop the duration altogether. It is the

1 Complete Works, VII, 172.

270 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

depth at which we live and not at all the sur
face extension that imports. We pierce to
the eternity, of which time is the flitting sur
face; and, really, the least acceleration of
thought and the least increase of power of
thought, make life to seem and to be a vast
duration. We call it time ; but when that ac
celeration and that deepening take effect, it
acquires another and a higher name." 1

Finally, Emerson finds the stay amid the
illusions of life in an experience which is
reminiscent of the mystic experience of
Plotinus. The most famous of Plotinus' de
scriptions and the one which impressed Em
erson most deeply is that closing sentence of
the Select Works. "This, therefore, is the
life of the Gods, and of divine and happy
men, a liberation from all terrene concerns,
a life unaccompanied with human pleasures,
and a flight of the alone to the alone." 2 The
loneliness of the experience echoes in the
closing paragraph of Emerson's essay, Illu
sions: "There is no chance and no anarchy
in the universe. All is system and gradation.
Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The
young mortal enters the hall of the firmament;

1 Ibid., VII., 183.

2 p. 506.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 271

there is he alone with them alone, they pour
ing on him benedictions and gifts, and beckon
ing him up to their thrones. On the instant,
and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions.
He fancies himself in a vast crowd which
sways this way and that and whose movement
and doings he must obey; he fancies him
self poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad
crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously
commanding this thing to be done, now that
What is he that he should resist their will,
and think or act for himself? Every moment
new changes and new showers of deceptions
to baffle and distract him. And when, by and
by, for an instant, the air clears and the cloud
lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting
around him on their thrones, — they alone
with him alone." 1

In the treatment of the Hindoo doctrine
of illusions, then, Emerson comes finally to
interpret it from the standpoint of those teach
ings of Platonism which appear constantly
throughout his work. The conception of
law, or idea, the identity of all things, the doc
trine of time as an image of eternity — such
are the familiar tenets of his Platonism that
enable him to treat the subject of illusion as

1 Complete Works, VL, 325.

272 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the equivalent of the doctrine of the flux of
things. Such a hold has Platonism upon his
way of viewing the illusive character of life
that he even imitates the most notable passage
in Plotinus in which Plotinus teaches absolute
communion of the Soul with the Divine as
the highest and only reality in all experience.
A second idea of the Hindoos which Emer
son uses is that of the transmigration of souls.
This doctrine, Emerson holds, implies the
Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence. Thus he
writes: "The soul having been often born,
or, as the Hindoos say, 'travelling the path
of existence through thousands of births,' hav
ing beheld the things which are here, those
which are in heaven and those which are be
neath, there is nothing of which she has not
gained the knowledge : no wonder that she is
able to recollect, in regard to any one thing,
what formerly she knew. 'For, all things in
nature being linked and related, and the soul
having heretofore known all, nothing hinders
but that any man, who has recalled to mind,
or, according to the common phrase, has
learned, one thing only, should of himself re
cover all his ancient knowledge, and find out
again all the rest; if he have but courage, and
faint not in the midst of his researches. For

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 273

inquiry and learning is reminiscence all.'
How much more if he that inquires be a holy
and god-like soul! For by being assimilated
to the original soul, by whom and after whom
all things subsist, the soul of man does then
easily flow into all things, and all things flow
into it; they mix; and he is present and sympa
thetic with their structure and law." 1

This passage is characteristic of Emerson's
treatment of Platonic doctrine. It is a quo
tation from Plato's Meno as given in Taylor's
translation, with only minor verbal changes;
and the quotation includes the whole passage
(excepting the inserted clause giving the
Hindoo rendering) and not merely the por
tion Emerson incloses in quotation marks. It
also blends the doctrine of reminiscence with
that of the Over-Soul which is based on the
doctrine of the One as given in Plotinus.
Plato thus is Neo-Platonized. And finally, it
identifies the tenet of reminiscence with the
Hindoo doctrine of transmigration. The
conception of transmigration, then, which
Emerson holds is purely a Platonic one ; it has
been reinterpreted so that the purely objective
rendering of the idea has given way to an in
tellectual and mystical one.

1 Complete Works, IV., 96.

274 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

The first use which Emerson made of this
spiritualized doctrine of transmigration is to
be found in his poem, Bacchus. There he
prays for wine —

"Wine of wine,
Blood of the world,
Form of forms, and mould of statures,
That I intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures;
The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well."

And the wine is to be a wine of reminis
cence, too.

"Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine !
Vine for vine be antidote,
And the grape requite the lote !
Haste to cure the old despair —
Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;
Give them again to shine ;
Let wine repair what this undid;
And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;
Refresh the faded tints,
Recut the aged prints,
And write my old adventures with the pen

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 275

Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men." 1

Other traces of Platonic influence appear
in the poem. Plotinus holds to the contem
plative activity of all things, even inanimate
and Emerson reflects the same idea when he
prays for wine —

"That I, drinking this,
Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;
Kings unborn shall walk with me;
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man." 2

In the title of the poem Platonism appears.
Hafiz had used wine as a theme for verse but
its symbolic use in Emerson is purely Platonic.
"Bacchus," explains Proclus "is the mundane
intellect from which the soul and the body of
the world are suspended. . . . But the
theologists frequently call Bacchus wine, from
the last of his gifts. . . ." 3 The wine
that the poet prays for thus becomes the in
tellect which in its divine intoxication is to

1 Complete Works, IX., 125-127.

2 Ibid., IX., 126.

3 On the Theology of Plato, I., 216-217.

276 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

float through all beings. And this intoxica
tion is only the inspiration that the true poet
should have. Hence it was natural that
Emerson in his own copy of the Poems should
write as a motto for his poem this sentence on
poetic madness freely rendered from Plato's
Phaedrus: "The man who is his own master
knocks in vain at the doors of poetry." l It
is quite evident, then, that the transmigration
of soul in Emerson is not the physical kind the
Hindoos taught but a more spiritual experi
ence as conceived by Plato and the Platonists.
Even when Emerson does treat transmigra
tion as an objective thing, he interprets its
meaning as Cudworth, the Cambridge Plato-
nist, had suggested. In his copy of Cud-
worth a marked passage reads: "But as for
that other transmigration of human souls into
the bodies of brutes, though it cannot be de
nied but that many of the ancients admitted it
also, yet Timgeus Locrus, and divers others of
the Pythagoreans, rejected it, any otherwise
than as it might be taken for an allegorical de
scription of the beastly transformation that is
made of men's souls by vice." 2 In the same
manner Emerson writes: "The transmigra-

1 Bohn translation, I., 321. Cf. Complete Works IX., 443.

2 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 70.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 277

tion of souls is no fable. I would it were ; but
men and women are only half human. Every
animal of the barn yard, the field and the for
est, of the earth and of the waters that are
under the earth, has contrived to get a foot
ing and to leave the print of its features and
form in some one or other of these upright,
heaven-facing speakers. Ah! brother, stop
the ebb of thy soul, — ebbing downward into
the forms into whose habits thou hast now for
many years slid." 1

In certain other points of indebtedness to
the Hindoo philosophy the persistency of
Platonism is still noticeable. The name Over-
Soul may well have come from the Bhagavat-
Gita, as one critic has pointed out.2 There
the Supreme Spirit is called Adhyatma (Adhi
meaning above, superior to, or presiding over;
and atma, the soul, — not the soul that presides
over all, but that which is above the soul it
self) . But the meaning which Emerson gives
to the expression in his essay, The Over-Soul
is, as already shown, that which Platonism had
taught him concerning the One and its relation
to the other hypostases. A Hindoo term has

1 Complete Works, II., 32.

2 W. T. Harris, Emerson's Orientalism, in Genius and
Character of Emerson, edited by F. B. Sanborn.

278 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

thus been filled with Greek thought; or Greek
thought has been capped with an Hindoo
name.

In Emerson's poem, Brahma, is found an ex
pression of Emerson's doctrine of soul, or God,
which is almost entirely Hindoo in its man
ner of speech.1 Without a knowledge of the
Bhagavat-Gita the poem could never have as
sumed the form it now has. But its doctrines
of the soul — immortality and independence of
time and space, to which it gives expression.
are shared by the Platonist as well as the Hin
doo. And the sentiment of the third stanza —

"They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings ;
I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings — " 2

is that teaching familiar in Greek philosophy
from Parmenides through Plato to the Neo-
Platonists; namely, that the knower and the
thing known are one; or, as the poem says —
"I am the doubter and the doubt." Emerson
had used the same idea in his conception of
the Over-Soul and recognized its importance

2 Complete Works, IX., 195.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 279

in a history of the intellect. It thus was a nat
ural sentiment to use in a song of the soul such
as Brahma is.

And so it is plain that in the fusion of Hin
doo teaching with Platonism the latter re
tains its own form and is often felt as an influ
ence transforming the Hindoo philosophy into
a new product. At times the language is that
of the ancient East but it veils Greek thought
When the influence of Emerson's Oriental
readings comes to be worked out in all its de
tails, it may be shown that they colored the
manner of his speech and accentuated the con
trast between body and spirit, but the underly
ing intellectualism of Emerson's mind will
still claim a nearer kinship with Plato and the
Platonists than with the writings of the Hin
doos.

The doctrines of Christianity are a second
body of thought which Emerson associates
with Platonism. "Read in Plato," he says,
"and you shall find Christian dogmas, and not
only so, but stumble on our evangelical
phrases." 1 "Galvanism," he asserts, "is in his
Phaedo: Christianity is in it."2 It is natural,
then, to examine certain phases of Christian

1 Ibid., VIII, 180.

2 Ibid., IV., 40.

280 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

teaching in order to determine to what extent
Emerson has interpreted them according to
the doctrines of Platonism.

Sin in Emerson is viewed in its relation to
intellect rather than to conscience as Christian
practice views it. "There is no crime to the
intellect. That is antinomian or hyper-
nomian, and judges law as well as fact. 'It
is worse than a crime, it is a blunder,' said
Napoleon, speaking the language of the intel
lect. To it, the world is a problem in math
ematics or the science of quantity and it leaves
out praise and blame and all weak emotions.
All stealing is comparative. If you come to
absolutes, pray who does not steal? Saints
are sad, because they behold sin (even when
they speculate) from the point of view of the
conscience, and not of the intellect; a confu
sion of thought. Sin, seen from the thought,
is diminution, or less; seen from the conscience
or will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect
names it shade, absence of light, and no es
sence. The conscience must feel it as essence,
essential evil. This it is not; it has an objec
tive existence, but no subjective."

Such reasoning shows that Emerson identi
fies sin with evil, as conceived by the Plato-

1 Ibid., III., 79.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 281

who held that it was non-being. As
Proclus in his treatise on the Subsistence of
Evil says, "There is not, however, such a thing
as unmingled evil, and evil itself, or an eternal
idea, form and essence of evil, but moral evil
is mixed with good, and so far as it is good, it
subsists from divinity, but so far as evil, it is
derived from another cause which is impotent.
For evil is nothing else than a greater or less
declination, departure, defect and privation
from the good itself, and which is good alone,
in the same manner as darkness from the

sun."

Emerson adopts the theory that men do evil
involuntarily. "I believe not in two classes
of men, but in man in two moods, in Philip
drunk and Philip sober. I think according to
the good-hearted word of Plato, 'Unwillingly
the soul is deprived of truth.' Iron conserv
ative, miser, or thief, no man is but by a sup
posed necessity which he tolerates by shortness
or torpidity of sight." 2

This idea is Plato's familiar doctrine.
"No one," he holds, in the Timceus, "is vol
untarily bad; but he who is depraved be
comes so through a certain bad habit of body

1 On the Theology of Plato, II., 500.

2 Complete Works, III., 271.

282 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

and an ill-governed education; and to every
one these are inimical, as they result in a cer
tain evil." 1

The subject of prayer is one which Emer
son noted in the Platonists ; in his Proclus and
his lamblichus he has indexed the most sig
nificant passages on this topic. There he
found prayer in its highest form identified
with the mystic union of soul with the divine.
"The third and most perfect species of
prayer," lamblichus explains, "is the seal of
ineffable union 'with the divinities, in whom it
establishes all the power and authority of
prayer; and thus causes the soul to repose in
the Gods, as in a never failing port . . .
It also gradually and silently draws upwards
the manners of our soul, by divesting them of
every thing foreign to a divine nature, and
clothes us with the perfections of the Gods.
Besides this, it produces an indissoluble
communion and friendship with divinity,
nourishes a divine love, and inflames the
divine part of the soul. Whatever is of an
opposing and contrary nature in the soul, it
expiates and purifies; expels whatever is
prone to generation, and retains anything of
the dregs of mortality in its ethereal and

1 Bohn translation, II., 402.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 283

splendid spirit, perfects a good hope and
faith concerning the reception of divine light;
and, in one word, renders those by whom it is
employed the familiars and domestics of the
Gods." 1

This conception of prayer as a union with
God is at the basis of Emerson's belief that a
greater self-reliance must characterize our
prayers. The source of the reliance is, as has
already been indicated, in the dwelling of
God or the One in the soul of man. There
fore he writes: "In what prayers do men
allow themselves! That which they call a
holy office is not so much as brave and manly.
Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign
addition to come through some foreign vir
tue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural
and supernatural, and mediatorial and mirac
ulous. Prayer that craves a particular com
modity, anything less than all good, is vicious.
Player is the contemplation of the facts of life
from the highest point of view. It is the so
liloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It
is the spirit of God pronouncing his works
good. But prayer as a means to effect a
private end is meanness and theft. It sup
poses dualism and not unity in nature and

1 On the Mysteries, 271-273.

284 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

consciousness. As soon as man is at one with
God, he will not beg." l

In his conception of the fall of man Emer
son adopts the Platonic explanation. "It is
very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the
discovery we have made that we exist. That
discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever
afterwards we suspect our instruments. We
have learned that we do not see directly, but
mediately, and that we have no means of cor
recting these colored and distorting lenses
which we are, or of computing the amount
of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses
have a creative power; perhaps there are no
objects. Once we lived in what we saw ; now,
the rapaciousness of this new power, which
threatens to absorb all things, engages us.
Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, objects,
successively tumble in, and God is but one of
its ideas." 2

This explanation which finds the fall of
man to be a deterioration in his faculty of
spiritual intuition is in keeping with the
theory of the descent of the soul which Pro-
clus gives in a passage marked by Emerson.

1 Complete Works, II., 77.
*Ibid., Ill, 75-76.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 285

"From the beginning, therefore, and at first,
the soul was united to the Gods, and its unity
to their one. But afterwards the Soul de
parting from this divine union descended into
intellect, and no longer possessed real beings
unitedly, and in one, but apprehended and sur
veyed them by simple projections, and, as it
were, contacts of its intellect. In the next
place, departing from intellect, and descend
ing into reasoning and dianoia, it no longer ap
prehended real beings by simple intuitions,
but syllogistically and transitively, proceeding
from one thing to another, from propositions
to conclusions. Afterwards, abandoning true
reasoning, and the dissolving peculiarity, it
descended into generation, and became filled
with much irrationality and perturbation." 1
Associated with the idea of the fall of man
is Emerson's teaching of imbecility as the pre
vailing trait of man through all the ages.
"The key to the age may be this, or that, or
the other, as the young orators describe; the
key to all ages is — Imbecility; imbecility in
the vast majority of men at all times, and even
in heroes in all but certain eminent moments ;
victims of gravity, custom and fear. This

1 Quoted in lamblichus, On the Mysteries, 355.

286 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

gives force to the strong — that the multitude
have no habit of self-reliance or original
action." l

This is the teaching of lamblichus. In a
passage marked by Emerson he says: "For
since it is not possible to speak rightly about
the Gods without the Gods, much less can any
one perform works which are of an equal dig
nity with divinity, and obtain the fore-knowl
edge of everything without [the inspiring in
fluence of] the Gods. For the human race is
imbecile, and of small estimation, sees but a lit
tle and possesses a connascent nothingness ; and
the only remedy of its inherent error, pertur
bation, and unstable mutation, is its participa
tion, as much as possible, of a certain portion
of divine light." 2

In reviewing Emerson's treatment of the
doctrines of sin, evil, prayer, the fall of man,
his weakness, all of which bulk so prominently
in Christian dogmatics, it appears that the in-
tellectualism of Plato and the mysticism of the
Platonists determine Emerson's interpreta
tion. Sin and evil are not positive things;
they are viewed from the intellect as merely
negative. The essence of prayer is the mystic

1 Complete Works, VI., 54.

2 On the Mysteries, 164.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 287

union of the soul with the divine which prac
tically excludes the possibility of such simple
requests as "Give us this day our daily bread."
The fall of man is a lapse of intellect which
begins when man ceases to live mystically
united with the Divine. The intellectual
quality of all this teaching attracted Emerson.
The lack of this he felt in Christian teaching;
that appealed to emotion rather than to
intellect in man. The Platonists dwelt "in a
worship which makes the sanctities of Chris
tianity look parvenues and popular; for 'per
suasion is in soul, but necessity is in intel
lect.' " 1 In that distinction, which Emerson
found in Plotinus,2 Emerson reveals the differ
ence he felt between Christian and Platonic
teaching. Hence results the purely intellec
tual character of all he has to say on Chris
tian subjects.

The ascendency of Platonism in Emerson's
thinking appears in his relation to the tran
scendental philosophy of Germany. He came
in contact with this thought in his reading in
Coleridge. The Biographta Literaria and
The Friend of Coleridge are two works which
Emerson had carefully studied, and in them

1 Complete Works, II., 346.

2 Select Works, 417.

288 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the teachings of Kant and especially of Schell-
ing are openly stated to have been important
factors in the development of Coleridge's
spiritual life. Emerson gained a further
knowledge of German philosophy from an
anonymous translation of The Critique of
Pure Reason, published in 1838. This book
is in his library and shows some markings and
an index with entries — uLocke and Hume,"
"Immortality," and "Oblate Sphericity."
Emerson was familiar also with an account of
the systems of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling
that appeared in the Christian Examiner for
March, 1833. He valued highly Dr. James
Hutchinson Stirling's Secret of Hegel; but as
this book was not published until 1865 ^ could
have influenced Emerson's thinking only after
his main work had been done. The same is
true even in a greater degree of his indebted
ness to Edward Caird's A Critical Account of
the Philosophy of Kant (1877), which is also
in his library. As far then as his opportuni
ties were concerned Emerson was able even in
his early period of literary activity to gain a
notion of Kant's philosophy directly through
translation and of the teachings of Schelling
and the others through indirect sources.
But Emerson does not forget the primacy of

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 289

Platonism in his criticism of this German
philosophy. He does not regard it as an orig
inal thought product: he finds its sources in
the older philosophies of Greece. "Any his
tory of philosophy fortifies my faith," he
says, "by showing me that what high dogmas
I had supposed were the rare and late fruit of
a cumulative culture, and only now possible
to some recent Kant or Fichte — were the
prompt improvisations of the earliest inquir
ers; of Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xeno-
phanes." 1 "Hegel," he adds in another
place, "pre-exists in Proclus, and long before,
in Heraclitus and Parmenides." 2 Schell-
ing's identity-philosophy couched in the
statement that "all difference is quantitative,"
he includes among those generalizations
which "do all have a kind of filial retrospect
to Plato and the Greeks."3 Of Coleridge
Emerson once speaks very highly as one
"whose philosophy compares with others
much as astronomy with other sciences ; taking
post at the center, and, as from a specular
mount, sending sovereign glances to the cir
cumference of things." 4 This was said when

1 Complete Works, L, 160.

2 Ibid., VIII., 180.

3 Ibid., V., 241, 242.

4 J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I., 161.

290 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Emerson was but twenty-three years old; but
later, when he came to review the teachings
of Plato, he found Coleridge a "reader of
Plato, translating into the vernacular, wittily,
his good things." 1

Such relegation of Coleridge and the Ger
mans to a dependency upon ancient Greek
thought does not mean that Emerson totally
ignored their work. His writings bear traces
of indebtedness to German transcendentalism ;
but in his treatment of German thought he
does not identify himself very closely with
the Germans. He was content to accept the
terms they used and at times he agrees with
their doctrines; but true to his favorite Plato-
nism, he always reads its meanings into these
terms and consciously interprets the doctrines
of the Germans in his own characteristically
Platonic manner.

Emerson's conception of the transcenden-
talist will bear out this statement. He de
votes an entire lecture to this subject. If
there had been much of the German product
in his mind it would surely have come to the
surface. But his point of view is that of one
who considers the question from a superior
height. Transcendentalism is no new thing

1 Complete Works, IV., 39.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 291

to him. "The first thing we have to say re
specting what are called new views here in
New England, at the present time, is, that
they are not new, but the very oldest thoughts
cast into the mould of these new times . . .
What is popularly called Transcendentalism
among us is Idealism; Idealism as it appears
in I842."1

His characterization of the Transcenden-
talist thus proceeds to enumerate traits which
have already been seen to root themselves in
Platonism. At the very heart of the philoso
phy of the Transcendentalist is the emanation
Theory. "His experience," Emerson says, "in
clines him to behold the procession of facts you
call the world, as flowing perpetually outward
from an invisible, unsounded centre in him
self, centre alike of him and them, and neces
sitating him to regard all things as having a
subjective or relative existence, relative to that
aforesaid Unknown Centre of him." 2 Out
of this doctrine arises the central idea of his
ethics — self-reliance.3 The Transcendental
ist believes, too, "in miracle, in the perpetual
openness of the human mind to a new influx

1 Complete Works, L, 329.
*/&«., L, 334.
a Ibid.

292 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

of light and power; he believes in inspiration
and in ecstasy." 1 The Transcendentalists are
lonely people caring little for society and at
times unwilling to take an active part in its
labors. But such seclusion is for the purpose
of enabling them the better to keep in touch
with the divine within themselves.2 They are
lovers of beauty, too. "In the eternal trinity
of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in its
perfection including the three, they prefer to
make Beauty the sign and head." 3

All these traits recall the characteristic teach
ings of Emerson which, as already pointed
out, were molded after the manner of the
Platonists. In fact the only connection with
Kant that Emerson speaks of is through the
name. He thus declares: "It is well known
to most of my audience that the Idealism of the
present day acquired the name Transcenden
tal from the use of that term by Immanuel
Kant, of Konigsburg, who replied to the skep
tical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that
there was nothing in the intellect which was
not previously in the experience of the senses,
by showing that there was a very important

1 Ibid., 335.

2 Ibid., 342-354-

3 Ibid., 354-

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 293

class of ideas or imperative forms, which did
not come by experience, but through which
experience was acquired; that there were in
tuitions of the mind itself; and he denom
inated them Transcendental forms. The ex
traordinary profoundness and precision of
that man's thinking has given vogue to his
nomenclature, in Europe and America, to
that extent that whatever belongs to the class
of intuitive thought is popularly called at the
present day Transcendental." *

Far from claiming that this name was given
because of any conscious connection with the
philosophy of Kant on the part of those who
were called Transcendentalists, he openly
states in another account that the name was
given, nobody knows by whom.2 And he adds
that the only bond of union between the mem
bers in the group of New England Transcen
dentalists was that "perhaps they only agreed
in having fallen upon Coleridge and Words
worth and Goethe; then on Carlyle, with
pleasure and sympathy." 3

But the ascendency of Platonism is appar
ent not only in Emerson's conception of the

1 Complete Works, I., 339-340.
--Ibid., X., 343.
*lbid., 342.

294 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

transcendental movement in New England
but even in his manner of interpreting the
doctrines of the German philosophers. This
is borne out by the meaning which Emerson
attaches to intuition.

Emerson himself recognizes a difference
between Kant's conception of intuition and
that interpretation which was generally main
tained among the New England Transcen-
dentalists. As the quotation on the origin of
the name shows, Emerson sees a difference be
tween the transcendental forms through
which according to Kant experience was ac
quired, and simple intuitive thought. Kant
has reference to the intuitions of form and
space through which our knowledge of the ex
ternal world is given; but Emerson means by
intuitive thought, at least in its most impor
tant form, nothing less than the mystic ex
perience through which the soul of man en
ters into divine union with God. Thus he
explains that when we inquire into the nature
of the aboriginal self, on which a universal
reliance may be grounded, the inquiry leads
us to that primary wisdom which he calls in
tuition as distinguished from tuition.1 This
is not a mere form of knowledge, of which we

1 Complete Works, II., 64.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 295

become aware only by a process of reasoning
on a priori grounds; but it is a conscious ex
perience of the soul which is higher than
knowledge. It is thus a different thing from
Kant's intuition.

So too with Emerson's use of the terms Rea
son and Understanding. Of these he writes
to his brother: "Now that I have used the
words, let me ask you, Do you draw the dis
tinction of Milton, Coleridge, and the Ger
mans between Reason and Understanding? I
think it a philosophy itself, and like all truth,
very practical. Reason is the highest faculty
of the soul, what we mean often by the soul it
self ; it never reasons, never proves; it simply
perceives, it is vision. The Understanding
toils all the time, compares, contrives, adds,
argues ; near-sighted but strong-sighted, dwell
ing in the present, the expedient, the custom
ary." 1

As this quotation shows the distinction ante
dates Kant and is found by Emerson in the
seventeenth century writers; in Milton, for
instance, in whom Platonism is the ruling
philosophy, as indeed it was in the best minds
of his time. The writings of Kant had given
vogue to these terms Reason, Understanding,

1 J. E. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I., 218.

296 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

Intuition; but as they appear in Emerson
they are used in a sense which is purely in
keeping with his Platonism.

It is to be observed, too, that Emerson is
following Coleridge's lead in thus interpret
ing these terms. Coleridge tells us that he
had "cautiously discriminated the terms, the
reason and the understanding, encouraged and
confirmed by the authority of our genuine
divines and philosophers, before the Revolu
tion." 1 He quotes a passage from Milton to
support his statement, a passage which Emer
son had in mind also. And he explicitly
states that the use of the word intuition by
these divines and philosophers is more in
clusive than Kant's. "I take this occasion to
observe," he writes, "that here and elsewhere
Kant uses the terms intuition, and the verb
active (intueri Germanice anschauen) for
which we have unfortunately no correspon
dent word, exclusively for that which can be
represented in space and time. He therefore
consistently and rightly denies the possibility
of intellectual intuitions. But as I see no ade
quate reason for this exclusive sense of the
term, I have reverted to its wider significa-

1 The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, III.,

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 297

tion, authorized by our elder theologians and
metaphysicians, according to whom the term
comprehends all truths known to us without
a medium." 1

This use of the term is associated with the
practice of the Platonists which was followed
by the seventeenth century theologians that
Coleridge refers to. And it is interesting to
note that Coleridge falls back upon Plotinus
for an explanation of such intuitive knowl
edge. Thus to illustrate the character of the
transcendental consciousness he quotes Plo
tinus: "It is not lawful to inquire from
whence it sprang, as if it were a thing subject
to place and motion, for it neither approached
hither, nor again departs from hence to some
other place; but it either appears to us or it
does not appear. So that we ought not to pur
sue it with a view of detecting its secret
source, but to watch in quiet till it suddenly
shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the
blessed spectacle as the eye waits patiently for
the rising sun." 2 Intuition thus blends in
Coleridge with the mystic vision as taught in
Plotinus.

Direct evidence to prove Emerson's con-

352, note.
*Ibid., III., 327-328.

298 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

nection with Coleridge is at hand. To the
doctrine of correlation of mind and matter
Emerson was an enthusiastic adherent; and
the perception of the relation between these
two poles of thought, mind and matter, he de
scribes as an intuition. Thus he writes:
"This relation between the mind and matter is
not fancied by some poet, but stands in the
will of God, and so is free to be known by all
men. It appears to men, or it does not ap
pear. When in fortunate hours we ponder
this miracle, the wise man doubts if at all
other times he is not blind and deaf, . . .
for the universe becomes transparent, and the
light of higher laws than its own shines
through it." 1

The connection of this idea with Plotinus'
explanation of intuition is seen in the identity
of expressions. Plotinus writes of the mystic
experience — "It either appears to us or it does
not appear"; and Emerson echoes the lan
guage in his — "It appears to men, or it does
not appear." Now, this translation of the
passage of Plotinus in question appears only
in Coleridge's account; it is not to be found
in any of Thomas Taylor's renderings.
Emerson must then have noted it in Coleridge.

i Complete Works, I., 33-34.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 299

It explained intuition in a manner more con
genial to his way of thinking than was Kant's
restricted use of the term. Intuition thus be
came identical with the mystic experience he
dwells upon in his Over-Soul.

The ascendency of Platonism is also present
in Emerson's treatment of Kant's conception
of morals. On the primacy of morals Kant
lays great stress. A will is morally good, he
holds, when it is determined solely by duty.
And this duty is felt in a moral consciousness
which expresses itself in the form of a de
mand, or a categorical imperative: Thou
shalt do what the law prescribes, uncondition
ally, whatever consequences may result.1

When Emerson adopts this high conception
of duty, he connects the experience with the
mystic union of man with the Supreme Wis
dom. The perception of the moral law, he
holds is "divine and deifying. It is the beati
tude of man. It makes him illimitable.
Through it, the soul first knows itself. It
corrects the capital mistake of the infant man,
who seeks to be great by following the great,
and hopes to derive advantages from another
— by showing the fountain of all good to be
in himself, and that he, equally with every

1 Friedrich Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, 305.

300 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason.
When he says, 'I ought'; when love warms
him ; when he chooses, warned from on high,
the good and great deed ; then, deep melodies
wander through his soul from Supreme Wis
dom." 1

Out of Kant's conception of the categorical
imperative comes universality as the test of
all morally right conduct. The law thus be
comes: Act so that thy maxim may be cap
able of becoming the universal natural law of
all rational beings. Or as Emerson says:
"He is moral — we say it with Marcus Aurelius
and with Kant — whose aim or motive may
become a universal rule, binding on all intel
ligent beings." 2

But Emerson goes on to deduce from this
definition a new conception of Universal
Mind. "If from these external statements,"
he continues after applying the rule to justice,
courage, love and humility, "we come a little
nearer to the fact, our first experiences in
moral, as in intellectual nature, force us to
discriminate a universal mind, identical in all
men. Certain biases, talents, executive skills,
are special to each individual; but the high,

1 Complete Works, L, 125.
rf., X., 92.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 301

contemplative, all-commanding vision, the
sense of Right and Wrong, is alike in all. Its
attributes are self-existence, eternity, intuition
and command. It is the mind of the mind.
We belong to it, not it to us. It is in all men,
and constitutes them men. In bad men it is
dormant, as health is in men entranced or
drunken; but, however inoperative, it exists
underneath whatever vices and errors. The
extreme simplicity of this intuition embar
rasses every attempt at analysis. We can only
mark, one by one, the perfections which it
combines in every act. It admits of no ap
peal, looks to no superior essence. It is the
reason of things." 1

Kant's conception of morals, then, led
Emerson to restate his doctrine of Universal
Mind. To that, he held firm; it is central in
his beliefs. But the insight which Kant gave
him into the true nature of moral conduct so
impressed his mind that he was led to state his
favorite doctrine in a form that would make
it hold for morals as well as for the intellect.
This he was ready to do because in his study
of Plato he had come to realize that intellect
in him is always moral.

Another instance of Emerson's interpreta-

1 Complete Works, X., 93.

302 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tion of a teaching of German Transcendental
ism is found in his treatment of Jacobi's idea
that man is superior to law. Such an idea,
Emerson maintains is held by the Transcen-
dentalist. "In action he easily incurs the
charge of anti-nomianism by his avowal that
he, who has the Law-giver, may with safety
not only neglect, but even contravene every
written commandment In the play of
Othello, the expiring Desdemona absolves her
husband of the murder, to her attendant
Emilia. Afterwards, when Emilia charges
him with the crime, Othello exclaims,

"You heard her say herself it was not I."
Emilia replies,
"The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil."

"Of this fine incident, Jacobi, the Tran
scendental moralist, makes use, with other
parallel instances, in his reply to Fichte.
Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and
wrong except the determinations of the private
spirit, remarks that there is no crime but has
sometimes been a virtue. 'I,' he says, 'I am
that atheist, that godless person who, in op
position to an imaginary doctrine of calcula-

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 303

tion, would lie as the dying Desdemona lied;
would lie and deceive, as Pylades when he
personated Orestes; would assassinate like
Timoleon; would perjure myself like Epami-
nondas and John de Witt; I would resolve
on suicide like Cato; I would commit sacri
lege with David; yea, and pluck ears of corn
on the Sabbath, for no other reason than that
I was fainting for lack of food. For I have
assurance in myself that in pardoning these
faults according to the letter, man exerts the
sovereign right which the majesty of his be
ing confers on him; he sets the seal of his
divine nature to the grace he accords.' " 1

This account of Jacobi's belief comes from
Coleridge, who gives a translation of Jacobi's
letter to Fichte: "Yes, I am that atheist, that
godless person, who in opposition to an imagi
nary doctrine of calculation, to a mere ideal
fabric of general consequences that can never
be realized, would lie, as the dying Desde
mona lied; lie and deceive as Pylades when
he personated Orestes; would commit sacri
lege with David; yea and pluck ears of corn
on the Sabbath, for no other reason than that
I was fainting from lack of food, and that the
law was made for man, and not man for the

1 Complete Works, I., 336-337.

304 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

law." 1 In a footnote Coleridge gives the
quotation from Othello that Jacobi refers to.

A comparison of these two passages shows
the character of Emerson's additions to
Jacobi's statement. The four extra historical
instances which Emerson adds to Jacobi's list
do not change his rendering materially; but
the final sentence of Emerson's account con
tains a significant addition to Jacobi's words.
It gives a justification of Jacobi's belief — a
justification based upon a purely Platonic no
tion of the divine nature of man.

In adding the sentence giving this new
thought Emerson had in mind a passage in his
Select Works of Plotinus. Plotinus is writing
of the union of the soul with the One, which
means that the soul becomes God. To the
passage Taylor appends a note which Emer
son marked in his own copy and which he
elsewhere makes use of.2 The note reads:
"Hence Aristotle in his Politics also says,
that he who surpasses beyond all comparison
the rest of his fellow citizens in virtue, ought
to be considered as a God among men. He
also observes, that such a one is no longer a

1 The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, II.,
285.

2 Complete Works, X., 477.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 305

part of the city, that law is not for him, since
he is a law to himself, and that it would be
ridiculous in anyone to subject him to the
laws. Let no one, however, who is not thus
transcendently virtuous, fancy that law also is
not for him . . . Observe, too, that when
Plotinus calls the man who is able in this life
to see divinity a God, he means that he is a
god only according to similitude; for in this
way, men transcendently wise and good are
called by Plato, Gods and divine." *

The philosophy of Kant and the Germans,
then, cannot be considered as the main source
of Emerson's transcendentalism. He found
his inspiration in a scheme of thought that
antedated the appearance of the Germans by
over two thousand years. He does use the
terms common in that later phase of specula
tion. They were in the air at the time and
he does not hesitate to appropriate them. But
he gives them a new meaning. Such truths,
too, in their scheme of morals as appealed to
him he avails himself of; but the interpreta
tion he subjects them to bespeaks the ascen
dency of Platonism in his way of thinking.
His indebtedness to the Germans is thus a
trifling matter and what is more his use of

1 Select Works, 500, note i.

306 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

their suggestions cannot be adequately ex
plained unless the influence of Platonism upon
them is reckoned with.

It is true, that Kant and Schelling affected
Coleridge's thought. Without a knowledge
of Kant's reasoning concerning the intuitions
of time and space Coleridge would never
have come to conceive of law as an idea which
appears in mind and at the same time is pres
ent in nature. And had this correlation of
law and idea not appeared in Coleridge it
would have kept Emerson from interpreting
one phase of Plato as he did. But the inves
tigation of Coleridge's indebtedness to the
Germans falls without the scope of the pres
ent inquiry; it is sufficient to acknowledge it.

The ascendency of Platonism in Emerson
shows itself also in the formal criticism to
which he subjects the teachings of those men
in whom he has been interested. In his Rep
resentative Men he has left his appreciation
of Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare,
Goethe; but the defect of each is uniform; he
did not measure up to that ideal which Emer
son had fashioned in accordance with Plato
nism.

In Swedenborg Emerson was acquainted
with a mind that had fed upon Platonism and

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 307

out of it had built up its theory of symbolism.
This theory was known to Plato, Emerson
points out, "as is evident from his twice bi
sected line in the sixth book of the Repub
lic." 1 But Swedenborg, he goes on to add
"first put the fact into a detached and scien
tific statement, because it was habitually pres
ent to him, and never not seen." 2 Emerson is
not, however, blind to the faults of Sweden-
borg's use of this theory. In working out the
theory in his doctrine of the correspondences
between thoughts and things, his design,
Emerson holds "was narrowed and defeated
by the exclusively theologic direction which
his inquiries took. His perception of nature
is not human and universal, but is mystical
and Hebraic. He fastens each natural ob
ject to a theologic notion — a horse signifies
carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the
moon, faith; a cat means this; an ostrich that;
an artichoke this other — and poorly tethers
every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense.
The slippery Proteus is not so easily caught.
In nature, each individual symbol plays in
numerable parts, as each particle of matter
circulates in turn through every system. The

1 Complete Works, IV., 116-117.

2 /&«*., 117.

308 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

central identity enables any one symbol to ex
press successively all the qualities and shades
of real being." 1 In other words Sweden-
borg's symbolism is not developed on the ab
stract and universal lines that Emerson had
been led by the Platonists to follow.

In his treatment of Shakespeare he applies
his notion of the poet as philosopher and finds
his Shakespeare wanting. As the ideal poet
should do, Shakespeare "knew that a tree had
another use than for apples, and corn another
than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than
for tillage and roads; that these things bore
a second and finer harvest to the mind, being
emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all
their natural history a certain mute commen
tary on human life. Shakspeare employed
them as colors to compose his picture. He
rested in their beauty; and never took the step
which seemed inevitable to such genius,
namely to explore the virtue which resides in
these symbols and imparts this power: — what
is that which they themselves say?" 2 In
other words Shakespeare does not agree with
the ideal of the poet which Emerson had de
veloped out of his Platonic sources.

1 Complete Works, IV., 120-121.

2 Ibid., 216-217.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 309

Montaigne was a writer who cast a spell
over Emerson. Speaking of his work Emer
son says: "It seemed to me as if I had my
self written the book, in some former life, so
sincerely it spoke to my thought and experi
ence." 1 Yet for the scepticism for which
Montaigne stands Emerson had no sympathy.
"The final solution in which skepticism is
lost," he writes, "is in the moral sentiment,
which never forfeits its supremacy. All
moods may be safely tried, and their weight
allowed to all objections; the moral senti
ment as easily outweighs them all, as any one.
This is the drop which balances the sea. I
play with the miscellany of facts, and take
those superficial views which we call skepti
cism; but I know that they will presently ap
pear to me in that order which makes skepti
cism impossible. A man of thought must feel
the thought that is parent of the universe; that
the masses of nature do undulate and
flow. . . .2 Let a man learn to look for the
permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let
him learn to bear the disappearance of things
he was wont to reverence without losing his
reverence; let him learn that he is here, not

rf., 162.

183.

310 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

to work but to be worked upon; and that,
though abyss open under abyss, and opinion
displace opinion, all are at last contained in
the Eternal Cause . . ." 1 Skepticism in
Emerson thus loses itself in mysticism as he
had been taught by Plotinus to conceive it.

Of Goethe Emerson speaks at times in high
praise; but his great reservation finds Goethe
wanting in that high power of philosophic
analysis which contents itself with nothing less
than absolute unity. "I dare not say," he
writes, "that Goethe ascended to the highest
grounds from which genius has spoken. He
has not worshipped the highest unity; he is
incapable of a self-surrender to the moral
sentiment . . . He has no aims less large
than the conquest of universal nature, of uni
versal truth, to be his portion . . .
That is, Goethe fails to satisfy that unifying
tendency of Emerson's mind which enabled
him to appreciate the doctrine of the One as
expounded in Plotinus and the Platonists.

It is evident that Emerson read as a Plato-
nist. Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Montaigne,
and Goethe, are all held up to the ideals of
Platonism and their deficiencies revealed by a

1 Ibid., 186.
*Ibid., 284.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 311

comparison of their ideas with Emerson's con
ception of Platonism. He applies the same
standard of judgment to the body of English
literature with which he was most familiar.

In his review of the literature of England
he divides its writers into Platonists, or those
that elect to see identity in things, and non-
Platonists, or those that chose to see dis
crepancies. Thus More, Hooker, Bacon,
Sidney, Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne,
Donne, Spenser, Chapman, Milton, Crashaw,
Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor
are Platonists.1

Bacon, he holds, has traits of both classes;
but it is significant that Emerson dwells upon
the ideal, or Platonic, element in his work.
Thus he extracts from Bacon's Advancement
of Learning2 an account of Bacon's prima
philosophia, which, as has been seen, was a
factor in developing Emerson's conception of
the correlation of mind and matter. "Bacon,
capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends," says
Emerson, "required in his map of the mind,
first of all, universality, or prima philosophia;
the receptacle for all such profitable observa-

1 Complete Works, V., 238.

2 Works of Francis Bacon, edited by Basil Montagu, II.,
48, 93, 126, 128, 176.

312 THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

tions and axioms as fall not within the com
pass of any of the special parts of the
philosophy, but are more common and of a
higher stage. He held this element essen
tial; it is never out of mind; he never spares
rebukes for such as neglect it; believing that
no perfect discovery can be made in a flat or
level, but you must ascend to a higher science.
'If any man thinketh philosophy and univer
sality to be idle studies, he doth not consider
that all professions are from thence served
and supplied; and this I take to be a great
cause that has hindered the progression of
learning, because these fundamental knowl
edges have been studied but in passage.' He
explained himself by giving various quaint
examples of the summary or common laws of
which each science has its own illustration.
He complains that 'he finds this part of learn
ing very deficient, the profounder sort of wits
drawing a bucket now and then for their own
use, but the spring-head unvisited. This was
the dry light which did scorch and offend
most men's watery natures.' " 1

But the most significant thing in Emerson's
account is the identification of this aim of
Bacon's with that expressed in Plato's con-

1 Complete Works, V., 240-241.

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 313

ception of the metaphysical basis of all art.
Thus Emerson adds to his account of Bacon:
"Plato had signified the same sense, when he
said, 'All the great arts require a subtle and
speculative research into the law of nature,
since loftiness of thought and perfect mastery
over every subject seem to be derived from
some such source as this. This Pericles had,
in addition to a great natural genius. For,
meeting with Anaxagoras, who was a person
of this kind, he attached himself to him, and
nourished himself with sublime speculations
on the absolute intelligence; and imported
thence into the oratorical art whatever could
be useful to it.' " 1

Along with Emerson's division of English
writers into Platonists and non-Platonists goes
his emphasis .upon the Platonists outside of
English Literature, whom he advises us to
read as truly great men. The portion of his
essay, Books, which he devotes to such authors
bulks larger than any other single group of
writers. He includes Plato, Plutarch, the
later Platonists, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus,
Synesius, lamblichus, the so-called Zoroas-
trian Oracles and the remains of Hermes
Trismegistus. The last two he classes among

1 Ibid., 241.

3H THE TEACHERS OF EMERSON

the Bibles of the world. It is thus a collec
tion of books which reflects his own reading
and his appreciation of the worth of the
Platonists in the world of literature.

The writings of Plato and the Platonists,
then, were the feeding ground for Emerson's
mind. Just as the landscape artist keeps in
constant touch with the play of light and
shade, with the form, the color and the
minutest detail that awakens his sense of
beauty that his canvas may give back the
freshness of the scene he surveys; so Emer
son, by repeated and reverent readings in the
old philosophers, toned his mind in unison
with their speculation that his work might
have something of its calm, grand air of in
tellectual sovereignty. These books were to
him a piece of nature and fate. And he at
tended only to the utterances that had a mes
sage for him. It is as if a lone, wandering
astral body had swept through the old systems
of thought, wrested away a fragment here, a
fragment there, and so violently drawn them
to itself that their impact fired the central
mass with burning energy. What the at
tractive power of Emerson's mind is, is dis
cernible when these fragments of thought are
examined. It is a mind that is tyrannized

ASCENDENCY OF PLATONISM 315

over by a unifying instinct, that delights in a
sense of ceaseless movement or flux, that has
an affinity for beauty, that finds its highest
endeavor realized either in a consciousness of
the moral value of the world or in a mystical
union with the moral reality itself, and that
insists above all else on its own independence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BACON, FRANCIS. The Works of Francis Bacon. Ed.
by Basil Montagu. 16 vols. London, 1825-1836.

BOSANQUET, BERNARD. A History of ^Esthetic. Lon
don, 1892.

BUTCHER, S. H. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine
Art. Second edition. London, 1898.

CABOT, JAMES ELLIOT. A Memoir of Ralph Waldo
Emerson. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1895.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR. The Complete Works of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. by Professor Shedd.
7 vols. New York, 1868.

Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo
Emerson, The. 2 vols. Library edition. Ed. by
Charles Eliot Norton. Boston and New York, 1894.

COUSIN, VICTOR. Introduction to the History of Phi
losophy, translated from the French by Henning
Gotfried Linberg. Boston, 1832.

CUDWORTH, RALPH. The True Intellectual System of
the Universe, to which are added the Notes and Dis
sertations of Dr. J. L. Mosheim, translated by John
Harrison, M.A. 3 vols. London, 1845.

DE GERANDO, M. Histoire Comparee des Systemes de
Philosophic. 4 vols. Paris, 1822.

317

318 BIBLIOGRAPHY

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. The Complete Works of
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Centenary edition. Ed. by
Edward Waldo Emerson. 12 vols. Boston and
New York, 1903.

FIELDS, A. Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room. In the
Atlantic Monthly, June, 1883.

HARRIS, W. T. Emerson's Orientalism, in Genius and
Character of Emerson. Ed. by F. B. Sanborn. Bos
ton, 1885.

IAMBLICHUS, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chal
deans, and Assyrians, translated from the Greek by
Thomas Taylor. Second edition. London, 1895.
Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life, translated
from the Greek by Thomas Taylor. London, 1818.

L'ESTRANGE, ROGER. Seneca s Morals by way of Ab
stract. London, 1746.

OCELLUS LUCANUS. On the Nature of the Universe,
translated from the original by Thomas Taylor.
London, 1831.

PAULSEN, FRIEDRICH. Immanuel Kant: 'His Life and
Doctrine, translated from the revised German edition
by J. E. Creighton and Albert Lefevre. New York,
1902.

PLATO. The Works of Plato, translated from the Greek
by Thomas Taylor. 5 vols. London, 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 319

The Works of Plato, translated from the Greek by
H. F. Gary, H. Davis, G. Burges. Bonn's Classical
Library. 6 vols. London, 1848-1850.
The Dialogues of Plato , translated into English by
B. Jowett. 4 vols. New York, 1873.

PLOTINUS. An Essay on the Beautiful, translated from

the Greek by Thomas Taylor. London, 1792.
^^five Books, translated from the Greek by Thomas
Taylor. London, 1794.

On Suicide, translated from the Greek by Thomas
Taylor. London, 1834.

Select Works, translated from the Greek by Thomas
Taylor. London, 1817. Contains extracts from the
treatise of Synesius On Providence, with an introduc
tion containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of
Plotinus.

PLUTARCH. Plutarch's Essays and Miscellanies. Com
prising all his works collected under the title of
Morals, translated from the Greek by several hands.
Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin,
Ph.D., with an introduction by Ralph Waldo Emer
son. 5 vols. Boston, 1906.

Plutarch's Lives, translated from the original Greek
by John and William Langhorne. First Worcester
edition. 6 vols. Worcester, 1804.

PROCLUS. The Six Books of Proclus on the Theology
of Plato, translated from the Greek by Thomas
Taylor. 2 vols. London, 1816. Contains a trans
lation of Proclus' Elements of Theology, of his trea
tises, On Providence and Fate, Ten Doubts con-

320 BIBLIOGRAPHY

cerning Providence, and On the Subsistence of Evil.
The Commentaries of Proclus on the Timteus of
Plato, translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor.
2 vols. London, 1820.

TAYLOR, THOMAS. A Collection of Chaldean Oracles.
In the Classical Journal, 1817, 1818.

INDEX

American Scholar, The, 222.
Antagonism, see under Pyth-

agoreanism.
Anti-nomianism, 302.
Art, 189.
Art, 186, 187-188, 195.

B

Bacchus, 274-275.

Bacchus, 275.

Bacon, Francis, Emerson on,
23-24, 49, 311-312; First
Philosophy of, 49-51, 311-
312; identified with Plato,
312-313; quoted, 49-51.

Beauty, 172.

Beauty, theory of, 172-184.

Being, no, 120.

Blight, 74-75.

Books, 28.

Brahma, 278.

By-laws of the mind, 46-48.

Categorical imperative, 299-

300.
Categories of reason, 21.

Celestial Love, 158.

Character, 236.

Christianity, doctrines of,
279-287.

Circles, 128.

Circle, symbolism of, 239.

Coleridge, S. T., correlation
of matter and mind in, 42-
45 ; Emerson on, 289-290 ;
Emerson's debt to, 22-23,
297-298; on aim of the
Friend, 22; on Bacon and
Plato, 22 ; on intuition, 296-
297; on Kant, 296-297.

Comic, 178.

Compensation, 109-110, 113-
114.

Correlation of matter and
mind, 40-46.

Cousin, Victor, 20-21 ; 265.

Cupid, 256.

Cupido, 256-257.

Cudworth, on art, 189, 190;
on daemons, 153; on the
gods, 201-202; on nature,
34; on Pan, 252-254; on
Pantheism, 64-65; on plas
tic nature, 188-189; on
Proteus, 255-256; on trans
migration, 276; on Univer
sal Mind, 80-81.

32I

322

INDEX

Daemons, 148-153 ; 258-261.
Damonic Love, 150-153.
De Gerando, 70, 73.

Each and All, 175-177, 179.

Ecstasy, 29, 116, 118-119, 212-
214, 291-292.

Emanation, 62-64, 122, 291.

Emerson, as a critic, 219;
elements of Neo-Platonism
in, 24; errors in quoting,
226-227; his interpretation
of Plato, 8, 10, II ; his in
dices, 26, 33, 230, 238, 288;
his debt to Coleridge, 22-
23, 297-298; his identifica
tion of Bacon and Plato,
312-313; his Neo-Plato
nism, 12; his Pythagorean-
ism, 17, 18, 20; his relation
to Transcendentalism, 290-
293, 305-306; on Bacon,
23-24, 49, 311-312; on
books, 25; on Coleridge,
289-290; on Cudworth, 15;
on English Platonists, 311;
on early philosophers, 13,
33; on German philosophy,
289; on Goethe, 310; on
Montaigne, 309-310; on
Oracles, 6; on Orientalism,
265; on Plato, 13, 29, 263,
279; on Plutarch, 15-16;
on Shakespeare, 308; on
Swedenborg, 306-308 ; on

Synesius, 5; on Taylor, 7-
8; his reading, in Cousin,
20; in De Gerando, 16, 20;
in Plato, 20, 29-30; in
Platonists, 5-7, 117; effects
of, 27-29; marner of, 25,
26; in German philosophy,
287-288.

Eternity, 38-39, 137, 240, 269-
270.

Ethics, sovereignty of, 52.

£tienne de la Boece, 161-163.

Evil, 281.

Fall of man, 248, 284.
Fate, 133.
Flux, 56-68.
Friendship, 158.
Friendship, 158-164,
Furies, the, 258.

Goethe, 310.
Good of evil, 237.

H

Hegel, 289.
Hypostases, 83.

I

lamblichus, on mystic union,
93; on daemons, 148; on
friendship, 159-160; on
symbols, 203; on fall of
man, 248; on prayer, 282-
283; on imbecility, 286.

INDEX

323

Ideas, 53, 59.
Illusions, 267.
Illusion, 266-272.
Imbecility, 285-286.
Immortality, 134-137.
Indifferency, 108-115.
Initial, D&monic and Celestial

Love, 146-157.
Intellect, 27.
Intellect, 125-126, 130, 132-

134-
Intuition, 294-295; 298.

Jacobi, 302-304,
Jove, myth of, 235-237, 242-
244.

Kant, 288, 289, 292, 294, 296,
299, 300, 301, 305-

Microcosm, 71, 72.
Montaigne, 309-310.
Music, 142.
Mysticism, 92-105, 119, 162,

270.
Myths, in Emerson, 222-245;

in Plato, 221; rationalized,

250-262.

N

Nature, 34, 40, 41, 76, 77, 124,
186, 247.

Nature, antagonism in, 68-
69; conscious life of, 66-
67; an effect, 122-123; an
effluxion, 249; method of,
55-68; mysticized, 116-124;
restoration of, 73-76; sym
bolism of, 35-48; unity of,
72-73; a work of ecstasy,
116-119.

Law, 41, 42-45, 58-59, 267-

268.

Lecture on the Times, 39.
Line, symbolism of, 239.
Love, 164.
Love, 164-172 ; celestial, 153-

155; daemonic, 151-153.
Lyncaeus, 206, 207.

M

Maia, 266.
Matter, 112-113.

Ocellus Lucanus, 117.

Ode to Beauty, 174, 179.

One, the, doctrine of, 83-84,
87, 89; self-sufficient, 106-
107. See 'Mysticism.

One Man, myth of, 222-227.

Oracles, on ecstasy, 212-214;
on poetry, 207-208; on na
ture, 132; mysticism in, 94;
Emerson on, 6.

Orientalism, 264-279.

Orphic Poet, 246-248.

Over-Soul, The, 88, 95, 299.

Over-Soul, the, doctrine of,

324

INDEX

84-90, 162, 273; in art, 191-
192; name, 277.

Pan, 255.

Pan, myth of, 251-255.

Pantheism, 64-66.

Plato, 10.

Plato, on creation, 37, 194;
on early philosophers, 14;
on evil, 237, 281-282; on
flux, 56-58; on idea, 59;
on immortality, 136-137;
on love, 146, 163, 171 ; on
names, 35, 205; on original
men, 222-223 ; on poetic in
spiration, 214, 276; on rem
iniscence, 157, 272; on the
Good, 53; on time, 38, 240;
relations with East, 264;
symbolism in, 36-38.

Plotinus, as philosopher, 205;
being in, no, 120; dialectic
in, 129; mysticism in, 92-
97, 105, 162, 270; on arche
types, 156; on the arts, 193;
on beauty, 173; on celestial
love, 155; on contemplation,
67, 275 ; on creative power
of soul, 121 ; on divinity,
304; on emanation, 63, 122;
on ecstasy, 211; on immor
tality, 135 ; on intellect, 126,
156; on intuition, 297; on
matter, 112; on the One,
127, 156; on punishment,
241 ; on submission, 123 ;
on Universal Soul, 139.

Plutarch, on beauty, 181, 184;
on daemons, 148, 150; on
the Furies, 257; on human
lot, 242; on love, 165-170;
on sun, 249; on symbolism,
35-36; on brothers, 223.

Poet, a liberating god, 210;
as ideal man, 218; as
scientist, 206 ; different
from philosopher, 208; his
inspiration, 210, 214; his re
lation to man of action,
200; his use of symbols,
202, 203.

Poetry, and science, 205 ; defi
nition of, 207; Proclus' ac
count of, 195-200.

Polarity, 69.

Prayer, 282-284.

Proclus, on Bacchus, 275; on
beauty, 177, 179, 183; on
the daemon, 149; on defects,
257 ; on evil, 281 ; on fall
of man, 284; on fate, 131,
132; on good of evil, 238;
on immortality, 138; on
line and circle, 239; on
microcosm, 72; on mythol
ogy, 251 ; on poetry, 195-
200; Pythagoreanism in, 19.

Proteus, 255-256.

Pythagoreanism, 17, 18, 19,
69, 70, 108, 115, 159-160,
216, 245.

R

Reason, 295.
Regeneration, 75.

INDEX

325

Reminiscence, 272-274.
Representative Men, 16.
Rhymes, 215-217.

Schelling, 289.
Self -Reliance, 108.
Self-reliance, 106-108, 283,

291.

Seneca, 226.
Shakespeare, c^-
Simplicius, 128.
Sin, 280.

Smaragdine Table, 217.
Solitude, 06-97, 158-161.
Soul, 75-76, 78-80, 88, 120-

121. See Over- Soul.
Sphinx, The, 228-235.
Sphinx, 227-235.
Swedenborg, 306.
Synesius, 152, 230.
Symbolism, of line and circle,

239; of nature, 35-40; in

poetry, 202-204.

Taylor, Thomas, 4, 7, 8, 9,

19, 142, 143, 230, 231.
Thinking, 126, 128.
Time, 38, 39, 240, 269, 270.
Transcendentalism, 287-306.

Transcendentalist, The, 291,

302.
Transmigration of souls, 272-

277.
Trinity of beauty, truth and

goodness, 182, 201, 292;

Platonic, 79.
Two-Rivers, 61-62.

U

Understanding, 295.

Unity of things, 72-75, 268-

269.
Universal Mind, 80-82, 186^

191, 225, 300-301.
Uriel, 237-241.

Vice, III-II2.

W

World-Soul, The, 141-142.
World-Soul, The, 139-144.

X

Xenophanes, 73.
Z
Zoroaster, see Oracles.

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